Multivariate environmental similarity scores (MESS) for fossils that fell outside the potential distribution of their species. Negative scores indicate the distance outside the potential niche as a percentage of the niche's size.

<p>For example, a MESS score of −1.6 on BIO6 indicates that the fossil fell 1.6% outside the niche's breadth on the BIO6 climate variable (c.f., <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0072855#pone-0072855-g001" target="_blank">Figure 1</a>). Only incompatible climate variables are reported here (see Appendix S3 in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0072855#pone.0072855.s001" target="_blank">Material S1</a> for a full summary).</p

Relationships between fundamental niches, realized niches, potential niches and geographic distributions as (a) a Venn diagram (after [36], [157]); (b) in climatic niche space (E-space); and (c) in geographic space (G-space).

<p>A species' realized niche (R) is the intersection of its fundamental niche (F), its accessible climate or territory (A), and the climate and territory not barred by biotic interactions (B). Its potential niche (P) is the subset of the fundamental niche for which there is available climate (A), and its potential distribution is the territory with climate tolerable to the species. (F ∩ P) is the range of climate or geography that is climatically tolerable to a species but which is not accessible because of the lack of climate availability (E-space) or geographic barriers (G-space). A fossil may occur in E-space within the species' potential distribution (1), outside the range of available paleoclimate (2), or in paleoclimates which are available but actually not suitable (3). See text for details.</p

Relationships between pairwise changes in mean annual temperatures (MAT) and pairwise changes in potential distribution range sizes as well as between MAT and pairwise changes in geographic centers of potential distributions in 59 Nearctic chelonians during the last 320 ky.

<p>Warmer colors reflect higher point densities considering both climate and phylogenetic effects (top panel), only climate (middle panel) and only phylogeny (bottom).</p

Comprehensive overview of phylogeographic and morphometric analyses of North American turtle species.

<p>Given are details on intraspecific variability and differentiation, the marker system, the dating of splits (old = before the LGM, recent = after the LGM) as well as a comparison with the results obtained from paleophylogeographic modeling (1 = pattern mirrored in PPGM; x = pattern not mirrored).</p

Predicted current species richness according to 100% and 90% environmental envelopes (A) as well as historic fluctuations as projected for the last glacial maximum 21 ky BP (B) and the last interglacial (C) according to palaeophylogeographic models of 59 Nearctic chelonians.

<p>Dispersal capacities per species were restricted to the corresponding watersheds (D). For full videos see Appendix S4 in <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0072855#pone.0072855.s001" target="_blank">Material S1</a>.</p