Research Data - Marine fish assemblage as proxy to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the Lower Pliocene La Cueva Formation (34° S), Cardenal Caro Province, Chile
Description
Data from the manuscript of Caniggia-Soria-Galvarro et al., "Marine fish assemblage as proxy to reconstruct the paleoenvironment of the Lower Pliocene La Cueva Formation (34° S), Cardenal Caro Province, Chile". The material was gathered near Las Damas at 34° S in central Chile, it corresponds to fossil fish material collected on the surface of sandstones of Pliocene La Cueva Formation. The research consists in the use of modern ecological thermal affinities of fish assemblages to calculate relative sea surface temperature for the Early Pliocene of central Chile. This is calculated according to the Community Thermal Index formula, in which only extant fishes recognized in the fossil record of the formation can be used. All fossil taxa identified in the research correspond to extant organisms. Only genera and species can be used for the calculation, as these groups have more constrained and well defined thermal and depth ranges. The CTI of the assemblage can be interpreted as the relative SST of the locality during the Early Pliocene. The results show 5-6°C warmer SST than today at the locality for the Early Pliocene.
Files
Steps to reproduce
Fossil fish remains, taxa and respective specimen count information comes from the Universidad Austral de Chile collection, code and number of individuals of the material is referred to in the file "Material codes and specimen count.xlsx". First raw geographic distribution data (in this dataset obtained from OBIS between September and October 2024) must be filtered according to Morales (2024) Geospatial Proximity Filter in Python, in this dataset the resulting files are contained in csv format at the "Tesis" > "DATA" > "CSV" folders inside "La Cueva maps.rar". Next import the resulting files into QGIS with the BioOracle v.3.0 raster layer and use the Point Sampling Tool plug-in to create the xml files containing the respective SST of each occurrence point of the taxa. Then in Excel use the function median to obtain the 50th percentile value for each taxon, this corresponds to the STI needed for the CTI calculation. In another Excel file input the data of STI and abundance, and calculate relative abundance, weighted mean and standard deviation according to the formulas specified in the methodology. The resulting table should look like the "BioOracle v.3.0 Weighted Mean.xml" file. Reproduce the same methodology for genus-only data and species-only data. All datasets and codes for the beta diversity calculation, rarefaction and plotting of graphs are contained within the folders and R projects "La Cueva extra" and "Tesis" inside the rar files "La Cueva diversity and graphs" and "La Cueva maps" respectively. The R codes can be used to plot the data and assemble the figures detailed in them. The Excel sheet "Abundance and ecology data.xlsx" contains the information used for the calculation of Bray-Curtis and Simpson similarity in PAST v.4.17c. The R script "Rarefaction" contains the data and codes used for the rarification and richness estimation refered to in the study.
Institutions
- Universidad Austral de ChileLos Ríos, Valdivia