Modelando a distribuição geográfica das espécies no passado: uma abordagem promissora em paleoecologia

Abstract

Paleoecological studies are based on fossil records, which often have spatial and temporal gaps, making the analysis of past biotas more difficult, or even impossible. Thus, Species Distribution Models (SDMs) may be useful tools to complement the available information on the geographical distribution of species over time, and have been applied to many different paleoecological questions involving fossil data and paleoclimatic simulations. This paper presents a review of SDMs applied to paleoecological questions, showing how to build and evaluate these models using fossil data, as well as discussing important issues about their assumptions, uncertainties, and challenges. Moreover, it is illustrate the applicability of SDMs to paleoecological studies by discussing the extinction dynamics of Smilodon populator Lund based on the modeling of their geographic distribution over the last 126 ky BP.