Poster Number 60
See more from this Division: General Discipline Sessions
See more from this Session: Paleontology (Posters) I - Diversity, Evolution, and Biogeography
Abstract:
Modern biogeographic patterns based on the presence/absence of modern terrestrial vertebrate or vascular plant taxa from 16 U.S. National Parks were characterized using Nonmetric Multidimensional Scaling. Results of these analyses at species, genus, and family level are compared to determine if major patterns change with taxonomic level.
Results show that taxonomic level does not substantially influence the major patterns shown in biogeographic studies. The robustness of the ordination patterns is even more evident with the removal of avian taxa (56-69%) or rare taxa (20 to 70%). While the results of this study have direct applications to modern biogeographic studies, these results are especially exciting when applied to the fossil record. Many fossil taxa can only be identified to the family level due to poor preservation or a poor understanding of a group's systematics. The results of this study suggest that even such limited data can provide useful information on biogeography in Earth's past and how it has changed through time.
See more from this Division: General Discipline Sessions
See more from this Session: Paleontology (Posters) I - Diversity, Evolution, and Biogeography