BishtRef
Articles Journals Publishers Authors Subjects Most Cited New Papers Year Stats Open Access
journal article Open Access Feb 12, 2026

Preservation biases in the fossil record distort species ecological niche and distribution models

André M. Bellvé ORCID Val J. P. Syverson ORCID Jessica L. Blois ORCID Marta A. Jarzyna ORCID
Ecography Vol. 2026 No. 3 · Wiley
View at Publisher Save 10.1002/ecog.08085
Abstract
Ecological niche models (ENMs) increasingly leverage the fossil record to understand species' environmental associations and predict their geographic distributions. However, fossils do not occur uniformly through time and space, which can compromise the robustness of ENMs and thus affect ecological conclusions. Here, we assessed how preservation biases in the fossil record impact our ability to reconstruct ecological niches and distributions of North American small mammals during the late Quaternary. First, using small mammal fossil occurrences and associated depositional environment data, we quantified preservation potential (the likelihood that a given environment supports fossil preservation) and the preservation niche (environmental correlates of preservation) for three late Quaternary time periods (the Last Glacial Maximum, the deglacial period, and the Holocene). Second, we imposed the calculated preservation potential on simulated distributions of six virtual species to evaluate its impact on reconstructing species niches and geographic distributions through time. We found that preservation potential was highest in the Holocene and lowest during the deglacial period, with the differences driven by variations in climate and the prevalence of Holocene archaeological sites. In all intervals, warm, wet, and highly seasonal environments exhibited low preservation potential. These spatial and temporal differences in preservation potential significantly influenced niche reconstructions and geographic predictions, particularly impeding model quality when species niches extended beyond the preservation niche. We warn that such distortions can lead to erroneous ecological inferences, including inaccurate predictions of species responses to environmental changes and mischaracterizations of community assembly processes. We propose that our approach to modelling preservation potential can be applied across different regions, time periods, and taxonomic groups to help correct distortions caused by sampling biases through weighted background point selection that reflects these processes. Ultimately, this framework enhances the ability to disentangle true ecological patterns from preservation artifacts, improving the reliability of fossil‐based ecological and evolutionary inferences.
Topics

No keywords indexed for this article. Browse by subject →

References
74
[3]
Correlations between spatial sampling biases and environmental niches affect species distribution models

David J. Baker, Ilya M. D. Maclean, Martin Goodall et al.

Global Ecology and Biogeography 10.1111/geb.13491
[5]
Species distribution models: Administrative boundary centroid occurrences require careful interpretation

Justin R. Barker, Hugh J. MacIsaac

Ecological Modelling 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2022.110107
[8]
Behrensmeyer A. K. "Taphonomy" Encyclopedia of geology (2021)
[9]
Behrensmeyer A. K. Fossils in the making: vertebrate taphonomy and paleoecology (1988)
[11]
Taphonomy and paleobiology

Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Susan M. Kidwell, Robert A. Gastaldo

Paleobiology 10.1666/0094-8373(2000)26[103:tap]2.0.co;2
[12]
Burrowing Into the Past: Extending Niche Space Models of Procellariiform Breeding Grounds by Merging Fossil and Historic Data

André M. Bellvé, Janet M. Wilmshurst, Jamie R. Wood et al.

Diversity and Distributions 10.1111/ddi.70032
[22]
Davis S. J. The archaeology of animals (1987)
[24]
The art of modelling range-shifting species

Jane Elith, Michael Kearney, Steven Phillips

Methods in Ecology and Evolution 10.1111/j.2041-210x.2010.00036.x
[28]
A review of methods for the assessment of prediction errors in conservation presence/absence models

Alan H. FIELDING, JOHN F. BELL

Environmental Conservation 10.1017/s0376892997000088
[37]
Biodiversity losses and conservation responses in the Anthropocene

Christopher N. Johnson, Andrew Balmford, Barry W. Brook et al.

Science 10.1126/science.aam9317
[42]
Lee F. "Using population viability analysis and fossil records to inform the conservation of pāteke (Anas chlorotis)" N. Z. J. Ecol. (2025)
[43]
virtualspecies, an R package to generate virtual species distributions

Boris Leroy, Christine N. Meynard, Céline Bellard et al.

Ecography 10.1111/ecog.01388
[50]
Munkres J. W. Arid climate decomposition and decay: a taphonomic study using swine (2009)

Showing 50 of 74 references

Metrics
1
Citations
74
References
Details
Published
Feb 12, 2026
Vol/Issue
2026(3)
License
View
Authors
A
André M. Bellvé

Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University Columbus OH USA

V
Val J. P. Syverson

Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, University of California – Davis Davis CA USA; Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of California – Merced Merced CA USA

J
Jessica L. Blois

Department of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of California – Merced Merced CA USA

M
Marta A. Jarzyna

Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University Columbus OH USA; Translational Data Analytics Institute, The Ohio State University Columbus OH USA

Cite This Article
André M. Bellvé, Val J. P. Syverson, Jessica L. Blois, et al. (2026). Preservation biases in the fossil record distort species ecological niche and distribution models. Ecography, 2026(3). https://doi.org/10.1002/ecog.08085
Related

You May Also Like

Collinearity: a review of methods to deal with it and a simulation study evaluating their performance

Carsten F. Dormann, Jane Elith · 2012

8,522 citations

Novel methods improve prediction of species’ distributions from occurrence data

Jane Elith*, Catherine H. Graham* · 2006

7,070 citations

Modeling of species distributions with Maxent: new extensions and a comprehensive evaluation

Steven J. Phillips, Miroslav Dudík · 2008

5,500 citations

A practical guide to MaxEnt for modeling species' distributions: what it does, and why inputs and settings matter

Cory Merow, Matthew J. Smith · 2013

3,078 citations

BIOMOD – a platform for ensemble forecasting of species distributions

Wilfried Thuiller, Bruno Lafourcade · 2009

2,239 citations