Data from: Macroevolutionary consequences of profound climate change on niche evolution in marine mollusks over the past three million years

In order to predict the fate of biodiversity in a rapidly changing world,
we must first understand how species adapt to new environmental
conditions. The long-term evolutionary dynamics of species'
physiological tolerances to differing climatic regimes remain obscure.
Here, we unite palaeontological and neontological data to analyse whether
species' environmental tolerances remain stable across 3 Myr of
profound climatic changes using 10 phylogenetically, ecologically and
developmentally diverse mollusc species from the Atlantic and Gulf Coastal
Plains, USA. We additionally investigate whether these species' upper
and lower thermal tolerances are constrained across this interval. We find
that these species' environmental preferences are stable across the
duration of their lifetimes, even when faced with significant
environmental perturbations. The results suggest that species will respond
to current and future warming either by altering distributions to track
suitable habitat or, if the pace of change is too rapid, by going extinct.
Our findings also support methods that project species' present-day
environmental requirements to future climatic landscapes to assess
conservation risks.