The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities
The relative influence of niche vs. neutral processes in ecosystem dynamics is an on‐going debate, but the extent to which they structured the earliest animal communities is unknown. Some of the oldest known metazoan‐dominated paleocommunities occur in Ediacaran age (~ 565 million years old) strata...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:6899650 2023-05-15T17:22:08+02:00 The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities Mitchell, Emily G. Harris, Simon Kenchington, Charlotte G. Vixseboxse, Philip Roberts, Lucy Clark, Catherine Dennis, Alexandra Liu, Alexander G. Wilby, Philip R. 2019-09-12 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899650/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31515929 https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 en eng John Wiley and Sons Inc. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899650/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31515929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 © 2019 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by CNRS and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. CC-BY Letters Text 2019 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 2019-12-22T01:21:25Z The relative influence of niche vs. neutral processes in ecosystem dynamics is an on‐going debate, but the extent to which they structured the earliest animal communities is unknown. Some of the oldest known metazoan‐dominated paleocommunities occur in Ediacaran age (~ 565 million years old) strata in Newfoundland, Canada and Charnwood Forest, UK. These comprise large and diverse populations of sessile organisms that are amenable to spatial point process analyses, enabling inference of the most likely underlying niche or neutral processes governing community structure. We mapped seven Ediacaran paleocommunities using LiDAR, photogrammetry and a laser line probe. We found that neutral processes dominate these paleocommunities, with niche processes exerting limited influence, in contrast with the niche‐dominated dynamics of modern marine ecosystems. The dominance of neutral processes suggests that early metazoan diversification may not have been driven by systematic adaptations to the local environment, but instead may have resulted from stochastic demographic differences. Text Newfoundland PubMed Central (PMC) Canada Ecology Letters 22 12 2028 2038 |
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Letters Mitchell, Emily G. Harris, Simon Kenchington, Charlotte G. Vixseboxse, Philip Roberts, Lucy Clark, Catherine Dennis, Alexandra Liu, Alexander G. Wilby, Philip R. The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
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Letters |
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The relative influence of niche vs. neutral processes in ecosystem dynamics is an on‐going debate, but the extent to which they structured the earliest animal communities is unknown. Some of the oldest known metazoan‐dominated paleocommunities occur in Ediacaran age (~ 565 million years old) strata in Newfoundland, Canada and Charnwood Forest, UK. These comprise large and diverse populations of sessile organisms that are amenable to spatial point process analyses, enabling inference of the most likely underlying niche or neutral processes governing community structure. We mapped seven Ediacaran paleocommunities using LiDAR, photogrammetry and a laser line probe. We found that neutral processes dominate these paleocommunities, with niche processes exerting limited influence, in contrast with the niche‐dominated dynamics of modern marine ecosystems. The dominance of neutral processes suggests that early metazoan diversification may not have been driven by systematic adaptations to the local environment, but instead may have resulted from stochastic demographic differences. |
format |
Text |
author |
Mitchell, Emily G. Harris, Simon Kenchington, Charlotte G. Vixseboxse, Philip Roberts, Lucy Clark, Catherine Dennis, Alexandra Liu, Alexander G. Wilby, Philip R. |
author_facet |
Mitchell, Emily G. Harris, Simon Kenchington, Charlotte G. Vixseboxse, Philip Roberts, Lucy Clark, Catherine Dennis, Alexandra Liu, Alexander G. Wilby, Philip R. |
author_sort |
Mitchell, Emily G. |
title |
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
title_short |
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
title_full |
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
title_fullStr |
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
title_full_unstemmed |
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities |
title_sort |
importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring ediacaran early animal communities |
publisher |
John Wiley and Sons Inc. |
publishDate |
2019 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899650/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31515929 https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 |
geographic |
Canada |
geographic_facet |
Canada |
genre |
Newfoundland |
genre_facet |
Newfoundland |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6899650/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31515929 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 |
op_rights |
© 2019 The Authors. Ecology Letters published by CNRS and John Wiley & Sons Ltd This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
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CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13383 |
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Ecology Letters |
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22 |
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12 |
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2028 |
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2038 |
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1766108539290386432 |