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Palaeoecology is the study of past ecosystems using palaeontological methods. Fossil data are used to reconstruct interactions between different species and between species and their environment.
A shift towards more-frequent, less-intense fires in Australia began about 11,000 years ago due to management by Indigenous societies, according to charcoal and stable polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon records extending back 150,000 years.
Coral reefs off southeast Florida were largely covered by Acropora species in the late Holocene, but are now increasingly dominated by more stress-tolerant species in response to modern anthropogenic stressors and global warming, according to an analysis of modern and past coral assemblages covering the past 4500 years.
Subtidal seagrasses were replaced by intertidal mangroves 1,000 years ago on Torrens Island, South Australia, following a fall in sea level, according to a 4,000-years reconstruction of coastal plant communities based on eDNA and chemical analyses from four soil cores.
Floristic homogenization — an increase in plant similarity within a given region — threatens biodiversity. By studying the taxonomic similarity of the floras of South Pacific islands over the past 5,000 years, we find that initial human settlement was probably a major driver of floristic homogenization.
Analysis of regional-scale pollen data from southeast Australia that span the entire Holocene epoch reveals that plant functional diversity has been highly variable in time and space. A functional perspective on palaeoecological data helps us to better understand the current climate–biodiversity crisis and to predict future changes.
Rapid morphological evolution in early echinoderms was later outpaced by increases in ecological diversification, indicating the phylum exhibited morphological volatility and ecological constraints at its origin.
A new lower Cambrian fossil locality in South China offers spectacular glimpses into the post-larval development of a wide variety of soft-bodied early marine animals, knowledge of which has been confined to their mature stages until now.