COS 27-1 - Arthropod diversity research across spatiotemporal scales: The promise of rodent paleomiddens

Abstract: Palaeological records are increasingly important to the study of ecology, allowing for an expanded temporal scope and the establishment of historic biodiversity baselines. Yet, arthropods are underrepresented in the study of paleoecology, despite their importance for plant demography, community assembly, and ecosystem scale processes in modern systems. Small herbivore paleomiddens are one of the best repositories of ancient arthropod assemblages, with a global distribution and remains as old as 50k years. To synthesize the current state of work using arthropod remains from rodent paleomiddens we conducted a literature search and compiled a database of all published studies reporting arthropod remains. Through an integration of a qualitative review and quantitative analyses, we identified three areas in which paleomidden arthropods can be used to address fundamental ecological questions. We found that although studies of paleomidden arthropod assemblages have almost exclusively been used to support vegetative and climatic reconstructions, these resources could be leveraged to study ancient trophic webs, the role of climate and biotic interactions in the production of biodiversity, and the mechanistic relationships between environmental change and arthropod community composition. Yet, for such studies to be successful, we found that increased sampling of both ancient and modern arthropod assemblages will be necessary before direct links can be drawn between these temporally distant communities. Additionally, standardized sampling methods need to be established before studies can confidently model changes in community assemblage over space and time. Lastly, we found that low taxonomic resolution could limit our analytic ability to identify shifts in community diversity and composition over both small and large spatiotemporal scales. Our review highlights how insights from community ecology and new technologies can be leveraged to improve the inferential scope of paleomidden arthropod research as a new frontier in ecology.