The stability of coastal benthic biogeography over the last 10 million years

Aim We demarcate marine benthic global bioregions based on fossil and recent occurrence data. Our main goal is to compare past and present biogeography and to extract major abiotic drivers of biogeographical patterns. We specifically test the hypothesis that global biogeography has changed markedly after the climatic fluctuations of the past 10 Myr. Location Worldwide. Time period Recent; late Miocene–Pleistocene interval. Major taxa studied Benthic taxa with a rich fossil record: Bivalvia, Brachiopoda, Bryozoa, Gastropoda, Echinodermata, Decapoda and reef corals. Methods We use occurrence data from the Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS) and the Paleobiology Database to construct compositional networks and outline objective marine bioregions of benthic marine invertebrates using the “infomap” community detection algorithm. We assess the association of modern bioregions with a variety of environmental parameters by applying multivariate statistical analyses, such as principal components analysis, random forests and multiple logistic regressions. Results Recent first‐order bioregions for the coastal ocean are, in general, consistent across all taxa. Seawater temperature surpasses nutrients, primary production and salinity as a predictor of modern bioregion distributions. Despite substantial climatic variations, late Cenozoic biogeographical patterns recorded in fossils are very similar to modern ones. Main conclusions Biogeographical boundaries within oceans are strongly controlled by temperature gradients, but open oceanic and continental barriers determine the global biogeographical structure. The joint structure of a landmass distribution, deep ocean basins and the latitudinal temperature gradient defines bioregionalization of the benthic marine habitat, which did not change substantially over the past 10 Myr.