Data from: Coupling of palaeontological and neontological reef coral data improves forecasts of biodiversity responses under global climatic change

Reef corals are currently undergoing climatically-driven poleward range
expansions, with some evidence for equatorial range retractions.
Predicting their response to future climate scenarios is critical to their
conservation, but ecological models are based only on short-term
observations. The fossil record provides the only empirical evidence for
the long-term response of organisms under perturbed climate states. The
palaeontological record from the Last Interglacial (LIG; 125,000 years
ago), a time of global warming, suggests that reef corals experienced
poleward range shifts and an equatorial decline relative to their modern
distribution. However, this record is spatiotemporally biased, and
existing methods cannot account for data absence. Here, we use ecological
niche modelling to estimate reef corals’ realised niche and LIG
distribution, based on modern and fossil occurrences. We then make
inferences about modelled habitability under two future climate change
scenarios (RCP4.5, RCP8.5). Reef coral ranges during the LIG were
comparable to the present, with no prominent equatorial decrease in
habitability. Reef corals are likely to experience poleward range
expansion and large equatorial declines under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. However,
this range expansion is likely optimistic in the face of anthropogenic
climate change. Incorporation of fossil data in niche models improves
forecasts of biodiversity responses under global climatic change.