Evolution of Gastropod-shell inhabiting organisms, preservational constraints and ecological opportunities

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

This project investigates the evolutionary patterns of gastropod shell biota from subtropical and tropical Miocene to Recene assemblanges as a function of ecological opportunities and preservational biases created by hermit crabs. PI will study shell bionts associated with a guild of marine hermit crabs, living snails, empty and experimental tethered shells in two habitats (rocky intertidal and sandflat) in Purerto Penasco, Mexico. I will identify guilds of bionts associated with each shell inhabitant and formulate criteria by which these shell occupants (snail or hermit crab), and their prospective habitats, can be recognized in the fossil record. I will then determine, using the fossil record, if these bionts are (1) recurrent as guilds or change through time as a result of hermit crabs providing a novel substrate (the empty gastropod shell), (2) adequate to distingush the evolutionary history of the hermit crab, and (3) indicative of how much the gastropod fossil record has been biased by hermit crabs, thus potentially biasing gastropod paleoecology. Hermit crabs may have caused evolutionary breakthroughs in shell biota and this biota, in turn, may be indicative of the little known fossil history of hermit crabs and their shell use through time. Research will address how ecoligcal interactions may have changed through time.