Facilitating corals in an early Silurian deep-water assemblage
Facilitating corals in an early Silurian deep-water assemblage
复制标题
促进早期志留世深水组合中的珊瑚
DOI：
10.1111/pala.12527
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发表时间：
2021
期刊：
影响因子：
2.6
通讯作者：
Dhungana A
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Dhungana A
珊瑚是强大的生态系统工程师，随着时间的推移，它们可以形成具有非凡生物多样性的珊瑚礁群落。了解珊瑚空间分布的过程使我们能够确定构成珊瑚群落的关键生物和物理过程，以及这些过程和相互作用是如何演变的。然而，对化石记录中的珊瑚组合进行的空间生态学研究很少。本文利用空间点过程分析（SPPA）研究了保存在爱尔兰志留纪火山灰下的珊瑚群落（n = 199）的生态相互作用。SPPA能够识别许多不同种类的相互作用，包括分布限制和分类群内部和之间的竞争。我们的SPPA发现，红珊瑚的空间分布最适合用Thomas集群（pd= 0.834）来模拟，表明一个单一的扩散阶段，而表形珊瑚的空间分布最适合用双Thomas集群（pd= 0.820）来模拟，表明两个扩散阶段。此外，双聚类（pd= 0.970）对双变量分布进行了最好的模拟，提供了显著的证据，证明了表形珊瑚和袋状珊瑚种群之间的促进作用，并确定了该群落中的促进作用是表形珊瑚。这种相互作用可能是使无根生物在长时间内聚集的重要生态驱动因素，促进作用可能有助于解释奥陶纪和志留纪早期生物多样化期间珊瑚礁多样性和丰度的趋势。
Corals are powerful ecosystem engineers and can form reef communities with extraordinary biodiversity through time. Understanding the processes underlying the spatial distribution of corals allows us to identify the key biological and physical processes that structure coral communities and how these processes and interactions have evolved. However, few spatial ecology studies have been conducted on coral assemblages in the fossil record. Here we use spatial point process analysis (SPPA) to investigate the ecological interactions of anin situtabulate and rugose coral community (n = 199), preserved under volcanic ash in the Silurian of Ireland. SPPA is able to identify many different sorts of interactions including dispersal limitation and competition within and between taxa. Our SPPA found that the spatial distribution of rugose corals were best modelled by Thomas clusters (pd= 0.834), indicating a single dispersal episode and that the tabulate corals were best modelled by double Thomas clusters (pd= 0.820), indicating two dispersal episodes. Further, the bivariate distribution was best modelled by linked double clusters (pd= 0.970), giving significant evidence of facilitation between the tabulate and rugose populations, and identifying the facilitators in this community to be the tabulate corals. This interaction could be an important ecological driver for enabling the aggregation of sessile organisms over long temporal periods and facilitation may help to explain trends in reef diversity and abundance during the Ordovician biodiversification and in the early Silurian.