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Late Pleistocene and Holocene molluscan taxa from south Florida – an examination of survivorship

Metadata Updated: September 30, 2024

Conservation planners and resource managers are concerned about ecological resilience and survival of species as climate and sea level change. The fossil record contains an excellent means to test species responses to changing conditions. This dataset utilizes molluscan faunal data extracted from a fossil database – the Paleobiology Database (PBDB; https://paleobiodb.org/classic) – for the late Pleistocene through Holocene (129,000 years before present (ybp) to present), limited to the south Florida region, as a way to address the question how many molluscan taxa survived the significant changes to Florida’s coastline over approximately the last 129,000 years. The initial PDBD download was cleaned by eliminating duplicate entries and invalid taxa. After the data cleaning and validation, 347 taxa remained (327 late Pleistocene, and 20 Holocene); of these, 314 are considered valid taxa for this study (294 late Pleistocene, 20 Holocene). The remaining 33 taxa had some uncertainty in their taxonomic standing that could not be resolved, but the names were retained for portions of the analysis. All 347 taxa were compared to databases and published lists of extant mollusks to determine which taxa have survived to the present, and if they are still found within Florida. When only the 314 valid species are examined for the late Pleistocene and Holocene, 93% of the taxa are still alive today, indicating survival throughout the last glacial cycle; 7% went extinct; and <1% were locally extirpated. Surviving species drop to 86% and extinct species rise to 13% if the 33 uncertain taxa are included for the late Pleistocene and Holocene. If just the late Pleistocene (0.129 Ma to 0.0117 Ma) valid taxa are compared to extant fauna, 92% survived, 8% went extinct, and less than 1% were locally extirpated. These data suggest that the molluscan fauna of south Florida are relatively resilient to significant changes, information that can be of value as resource managers develop conservation plans for changing conditions. The work described here is funded by the Greater Everglades Priority Ecosystem Science program of the USGS.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date September 30, 2024
Metadata Updated Date September 30, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date September 30, 2024
Metadata Updated Date September 30, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/b7c7982e8bbff0b97628aa88043e410d
Identifier USGS:66e45171d34e1cc1f894ec28
Data Last Modified 20240927
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id 7fd5c15e-ef36-469f-9523-a98228b2027b
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -83.5,24.0,-79.5,27.5
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash e33d29df830f9f2e89e36f7ffe0191ce51849c2a742f69966724bfcd7bcf8653
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -83.5, 24.0, -83.5, 27.5, -79.5, 27.5, -79.5, 24.0, -83.5, 24.0}

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