Patterns of ecological diversity in fossil and modern mammalian faunas

Abstract

Ecological diversity provides a means of analysing the community structure of fossil mammalian faunas in order to obtain information on the habitat of the fauna. As a basis for the analysis, 23 modern mammalian communities from distinct habitats have been used to establish patterns of community structure for tropical African habitats according to their species diversity by taxonomic group, size, locomotor zonal adaptation, and feeding adaptation. All the communities tested were in tropical Africa, but additional analyses on tropical forest communities in Australia, Malaya, and Panama have shown that these communities, which all have completely different species composition, nevertheless have community structures very similar to each other and to those of the African forest communities.

ecological diversity, mammal communities, habitats, palaeoenvironments