Fidelity bias in mollusk assemblages from coastal lagoons of Southern Brazil

The South America southern coast exhibits many outcrops with abundant shell beds, from the Pleistocene through the Recent. How much biological information is preserved within these shell beds? Or, what is the actual probability a living community has to leave a fossil record corresponding to these shell deposits? Although ecological and biogeographical aspects might had been pointed, considering these temporal scales, up to the moment there is no taphonomically-oriented studies available. Quantitative comparisons between living (LAs), death (DAs) and fossil assemblages (FAs) are important not only in strictly taphonomic studies, but have grown a leading tool for conservation paleobiology analysis. Comparing LAs, DAs and FAs from estuaries and lagoons in the Rio Grande do Sul Coastal Plain makes possible to quantitatively understand the nature and quantity of biological information preserved in fossil associations in Holocene lagoon facies. As already noted by several authors, spatial scale parts the analysis, but we detected that the FAs refl ects live ones, rather than dead ones, as previously not realized. The results herein obtained illustrates that species present in DA are not as good preserved in recent (Holocene) fossil record as originally thought. Strictly lagoon species are most prone to leave fossil record. The authors consider that the fi delity pattern here observed for estuarine mollusks to be driven by (i) high temporal and spatial variability in the LAs, (ii) spatial mixing in the DA and (iii) differential preservation of shells, due to long residence times in the taphonomically active zone.

Supplement to: Ritter, Matias do Nascimento; Erthal, Fernando (2013): Fidelity bias in mollusk assemblages from coastal lagoons of Southern Brazil. Revista Brasileira de Paleontologia, 16(2), 225-236

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.858259
PID https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.46898.d001
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.4072/rbp.2013.2.05
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.858259
Provenance
Creator Ritter, Matias do Nascimento ORCID logo; Erthal, Fernando (ORCID: 0000-0001-8036-192X)
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2013
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Supplementary Dataset; Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 221 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-50.000 LON, -29.500 LAT); Coastal Lagoons, southern Brasil