Abundance-diversity relationship as a unique signature of temporal scaling in the fossil record

Species diversity increases with the temporal grain of samples according to the species-time relationship, impacting paleoecological analyses because the temporal grain (time averaging) of fossil assemblages varies by several orders of magnitude. We predict a positive relation between total abundance and sample size-independent diversity (ADR) in fossil assemblages because an increase in time averaging, determined by a decreasing sediment accumulation, should increase abundance and depress species dominance. We demonstrate that, in contrast to negative ARDs of non-averaged living assemblages, the ARD of Holocene fossil assemblages is positive, unconditionally or when conditioned on the energy availability gradient. However, the positive fossil ADR disappears when conditioned on sediment accumulation, suggesting that ADR can be a signature of diversity scaling induced by variable time averaging. Conditioning ADR on sediment accumulation can identify and remove the scaling effect caused b..., , , # Abundance-diversity relationship as a unique signature of temporal scaling in the fossil record

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fttdz0903](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.fttdz0903)

## Description of the data and file structure

Table S1 – Diversity and abundance of living (non-averaged) molluscan assemblages in the northern Adriatic Sea, with source references. Data columns correspond to the reference, dataset ID (optional), latitude, longitude and water depth (m) of the assemblage, raw sample size and total abundance/m2. Diversity indices correspond to the effective number of species based on the PIE-based and Simpson index, the effective number of species based on the Shannon index, and evenness values based on the Pielou J and Bulla O. NA - data not available. 

Table S2 – Diversity and abundance of fossil (time-averaged) molluscan assemblages collected in sediment cores in the northern Adriatic Sea. Individual fossil assemblages are in rows, data columns correspond to the core ID,...