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 -