The temporal scale of diet and dietary proxies

摘要: Diets estimated from different proxies such as stable isotopes, stomach contents, and dental microwear often disagree, leading to nominally well-supported but greatly differing estimates of diet for both extinct extant species that complicate our understanding ecology. We show these perceived incongruences can be caused by recording over vastly timescales. Field observations reveal a averaged minutes or hours, whereas morphology may reflect the lineage millions years evolution. Failing explicitly consider scale potentially large temporal variability in cause erroneous predictions any downstream analyses conservation planning paleohabitat reconstructions. propose cross-scale framework conceptualizing suitable modern ecologists paleontologists provide recommendations studies involving dietary data. Treating this temporally explicit matching questions with data will lead much richer clearer ecological evolutionary processes.