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Palaeoecology is the study of past ecosystems using palaeontological methods. Fossil data are used to reconstruct interactions between different species and between species and their environment.
Oxygen in shallow shelf waters rose linearly with atmospheric oxygen in the Neoproterozoic era, potentially driving the first radiation of marine animals, but widespread ocean oxygenation came later, according to reconstructions of oxygen levels and marine productivity.
Global trends in biodiversity are subject to regionally heterogeneous diversification processes. Here, the authors examine Late Cretaceous ammonoids, modelling the impact of sampling bias and potential biotic and abiotic drivers on our understanding of their biodiversity trends towards the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.
A reconstruction of Cenozoic marine biodiversity in the Indo-Australian Archipelago reveals decreasing rates of net diversification and identifies the factors that have established it as the richest marine biodiversity hotspot.
Conodonts, early vertebrates, are thought to have evolved complex tooth tissue as an adaptation for feeding. Here, the authors use Electron Backscatter Diffraction to show increasing dental crystallographic order through conodont evolution, in parallel with dietary adaptations.
The authors investigate epifaunal tiering and ecological succession within the oldest preserved animal communities, those of the Ediacaran Avalon assemblage (574–560 Ma), identifying four community types that form irrespective of succession and finding that tiering is prevalent in three community types.
Floristic homogenization — an increase in plant similarity within a given region — threatens biodiversity. By studying the taxonomic similarity of the floras of South Pacific islands over the past 5,000 years, we find that initial human settlement was probably a major driver of floristic homogenization.
Analysis of regional-scale pollen data from southeast Australia that span the entire Holocene epoch reveals that plant functional diversity has been highly variable in time and space. A functional perspective on palaeoecological data helps us to better understand the current climate–biodiversity crisis and to predict future changes.
Rapid morphological evolution in early echinoderms was later outpaced by increases in ecological diversification, indicating the phylum exhibited morphological volatility and ecological constraints at its origin.
A new lower Cambrian fossil locality in South China offers spectacular glimpses into the post-larval development of a wide variety of soft-bodied early marine animals, knowledge of which has been confined to their mature stages until now.