University of Michigan
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

P. David Polly, Associate Professor, Department of Geological Sciences, Indiana University

Abstract: Climate change research increasingly focuses on dynamics among species, ecosystems and climates: better data about the historical behaviors of these dynamics are needed. Integration of existing data from ecology, paleontology and geology is hampered by differences in temporal and geographic scales. One way of bridging these scales is through the quantitative analysis of geographic distributions, climate interactions, and functional traits, using sampling schemes consistent with the coarsest of these data (namely the paleontological and geological data). Using locomotor traits in terrestrial vertebrates in the present and the recent geological past, I will look at environmental sorting of species by their traits, the interplay between geographic sorting and evolutionary change in response to climate, and changes in species climatic niches.

Host: Professor Dan Rabosky

Photo credits: lion - Derek Ramsey (2007) and reindeer - Paul Rudder (2008)