Across space and time: a review of sampling and analytical biases in fossil data across macroecological scales

Quantitative studies of fossil data have proven critical to a number of major macroevolutionary and macroecological discoveries, such as the ‘Big 5’ mass extinctions of the Phanerozoic. The development and easy accessibility of major meta-data sources such as the Paleobiology Database and Geobiodiversity Database have also spurred the widespread application of these data to testing ecological hypotheses at finer spatiotemporal and phylogenetic scales. However, issues of preservational/taphonomic biases, sampling/collecting biases, taxonomic issues, and analytical choice can impact the degree of interpretative resolution possible, and even obscure biological ‘signal’ from error/bias-introduced ‘noise’. The degree to which these factors can impact analytical interpretations is not well-documented in comparison to the scale of use of these data sources. Here, we review the many forms of systematic error that can creep into a paleoecological study, from the stage of data collection to the i..., ,

化石数据的定量研究已被证明对诸多重大宏演化与宏生态学发现至关重要，例如显生宙（Phanerozoic）的‘五大（Big 5）’生物大灭绝事件。诸如古生物学数据库（Paleobiology Database）与古生物多样性数据库（Geobiodiversity Database）等主流元数据来源的开发与便捷获取，也推动了这些数据在更精细的时空与系统发育尺度下验证生态学假说的广泛应用。然而，保存/埋藏偏差、采样/收集偏差、分类学问题以及分析方法选择等问题，会影响解读分辨率的可达程度，甚至会从误差/偏差引入的‘噪声’中掩盖生物学‘信号’。相较于这些数据源的使用规模，目前学界尚未充分量化这些因素对分析解读的影响程度。本研究综述了古生态学研究中从数据收集阶段起可能出现的各类系统性误差……