Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
The influence of environmental setting on the community ecology of Ediacaran organisms : Ediacaran environmental ecology. / Mitchell, Emily G.; Bobkov, Nikolai; Bykova, Natalia et al.
In: Interface Focus, Vol. 10, No. 4, 20190109, 06.08.2020.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - The influence of environmental setting on the community ecology of Ediacaran organisms
T2 - Ediacaran environmental ecology
AU - Mitchell, Emily G.
AU - Bobkov, Nikolai
AU - Bykova, Natalia
AU - Dhungana, Alavya
AU - Kolesnikov, Anton V.
AU - Hogarth, Ian R.P.
AU - Liu, Alexander G.
AU - Mustill, Tom M.R.
AU - Sozonov, Nikita
AU - Rogov, Vladimir I.
AU - Xiao, Shuhai
AU - Grazhdankin, Dmitriy V.
PY - 2020/8/6
Y1 - 2020/8/6
N2 - The broad-scale environment plays a substantial role in shaping modern marine ecosystems, but the degree to which palaeocommunities were influenced by their environment is unclear. To investigate how broad-scale environment influenced the community ecology of early animal ecosystems, we employed spatial point process analyses (SPPA) to examine the community structure of seven late Ediacaran (558-550 Ma) bedding-plane assemblages drawn from a range of environmental settings and global localities. The studied palaeocommunities exhibit marked differences in the response of their component taxa to sub-metre-scale habitat heterogeneities on the seafloor. Shallow-marine (nearshore) palaeocommunities were heavily influenced by local habitat heterogeneities, in contrast to their deeper-water counterparts. The local patchiness within shallow-water communities may have been further accentuated by the presence of grazers and detritivores, whose behaviours potentially initiated a propagation of increasing habitat heterogeneity of benthic communities from shallow to deep-marine depositional environments. Higher species richness in shallow-water Ediacaran assemblages compared to deep-water counterparts across the studied time-interval could have been driven by this environmental patchiness, because habitat heterogeneities increase species richness in modern marine environments. Our results provide quantitative support for the 'Savannah' hypothesis for early animal diversification - whereby Ediacaran diversification was driven by patchiness in the local benthic environment.
AB - The broad-scale environment plays a substantial role in shaping modern marine ecosystems, but the degree to which palaeocommunities were influenced by their environment is unclear. To investigate how broad-scale environment influenced the community ecology of early animal ecosystems, we employed spatial point process analyses (SPPA) to examine the community structure of seven late Ediacaran (558-550 Ma) bedding-plane assemblages drawn from a range of environmental settings and global localities. The studied palaeocommunities exhibit marked differences in the response of their component taxa to sub-metre-scale habitat heterogeneities on the seafloor. Shallow-marine (nearshore) palaeocommunities were heavily influenced by local habitat heterogeneities, in contrast to their deeper-water counterparts. The local patchiness within shallow-water communities may have been further accentuated by the presence of grazers and detritivores, whose behaviours potentially initiated a propagation of increasing habitat heterogeneity of benthic communities from shallow to deep-marine depositional environments. Higher species richness in shallow-water Ediacaran assemblages compared to deep-water counterparts across the studied time-interval could have been driven by this environmental patchiness, because habitat heterogeneities increase species richness in modern marine environments. Our results provide quantitative support for the 'Savannah' hypothesis for early animal diversification - whereby Ediacaran diversification was driven by patchiness in the local benthic environment.
KW - early animal diversification
KW - Ediacaran
KW - palaeoecology
KW - spatial analysis
KW - OLENEK UPLIFT
KW - FOSSIL DICKINSONIA
KW - MISTAKEN POINT
KW - WHITE SEA
KW - HABITAT HETEROGENEITY
KW - TRACE FOSSILS
KW - POINT PATTERN-ANALYSIS
KW - SPATIAL STRUCTURE
KW - DYNAMICS
KW - ANIMAL COMMUNITIES
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85089884105&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1098/rsfs.2019.0109
DO - 10.1098/rsfs.2019.0109
M3 - Article
C2 - 32642052
AN - SCOPUS:85089884105
VL - 10
JO - Interface Focus
JF - Interface Focus
SN - 2042-8898
IS - 4
M1 - 20190109
ER -
ID: 25288905