Conservation paleobiogeography: the past, present and future of species distributions

species distributions even more than the limits of their fundamental niches: interspecific interactions, dispersal limitations, and disequilibrium or historical contingencies (Fig. 1; Peterson et al. 2011). Occasionally, there may also be situations where a species distribution strays outside of its fundamental niche, for example in the cases of facultative interactions or sink populations (Fig. 1).With all of these various environmental and biotic stressors acting on the populations of interest, one can see that the populations should evolve over time. In theory, the stronger the stress or the more evolvable the species, the more rapidly their fundamental niche will change. As a result, the entire set of geographic regions where that species could theoretically live would shift. A long-standing suite of questions in the field concern niche conservatism through time. At what taxonomic or temporal scale does niche conservatism occur? In what situations do we find increased or decreased niche conservatism?In January 2013, at the biennial meeting of the International Biogeography Society in Miami, FL (Dawson et al. 2013), we brought together a group of researchers working on progressive aspects of conservation paleobio-geography in a symposium entitled “The Convergence of Conservation Paleontology and Biogeography.” Several of their research projects are included in this special issue of