The deep time drivers of biodiversity at the local, regional and global scales

Abstract

Biodiversity is non-homogeneously distributed in space, time and among lineages. It is imperative to move past phenomenological descriptions of biodiversity, to explore what are the underlying factors controlling changes in speciation and extinction rates. Most macroevolutionary studies have focused on large spatial and temporal scales, but macroevolutionary patterns should emerge from mechanisms acting at the local scale. The current project aims to use mammals as a macroevolutionary model system to integrate mechanisms and phenomena acting at different temporal and spatial scales, allowing us to better understand the drivers of biodiversity. I expect the main contributions of this project to be: the development and empirical application of ecologically oriented models of diversification that better circumscribe how interspecific interaction influence diversification dynamics; to provide a better understanding of how local and regional dynamics are linked and feedback in each other; to develop new methods that will be valuable to the whole macroevolutionary community. The project will be structured into different sub-areas representing different scales: 1- diversity dynamics at the global/regional scale; 2- diversity dynamics at the local scale; 3- the controls of biodiversity from the perspective of the species. To achieve these goals, we will use readily available data from online databases or the primary literature on fossil occurrences, ecological data for extinct and extant species, and molecular phylogenies. The data will be analyzed using a suite of different statistical methods including different birth-death models of diversification, which ultimately might allow us to update or even generate new paradigms on the mechanisms behind biodiversity dynamics at different scales. (AU)