CAREER: Persistent vertebrate communities in deep time and the great Triassic-Jurassic vertebrate transition

职业：深层持久的脊椎动物群落和三叠纪-侏罗纪脊椎动物的伟大转变

• 批准号: 1943286
• 负责人: Sterling Nesbitt
• 金额: $ 62.22万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-09-01 至 2025-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1943286&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: CAREER; Persistent; vertebrate; communities; deep

A major goal in ecology is to understand how communities respond to minor and major environmental changes over both short (seasons to decades) and long (thousands to millions of years) timescales. It is clear that some communities fair better than others, and it appears that some communities persist for millions of years. This project combines ecological tools for studying living communities with tools used to study extinct communities that can only be reconstructed using the fossil record in order to understand if and how communities persist over long timescales. This project aims to characterize and reconstruct vertebrate communities in the last 20 million years of the Triassic Period (252-200 million years ago) prior to the end-Triassic mass extinction. Those Triassic vertebrate communities are important for understanding communities of living vertebrates because they appear to be static during both quick and gradual climatic changes. Studying these communities will help answer: What makes a community successful during times of short and long-term environmental changes? Are the survivors of great changes a product of those earlier successful communities? These questions are being addressed through new fossils and measurements of the geological data associated with them, reanalyzing previously discovered fossils, and model-based approaches to characterizing the interactions of community members over millions of years of geologic time. Research is being integrated with educational activities at local, regional, and national levels, and graduate and undergraduate students and interested volunteers are being trained. An experiential K-12 teacher field school is taking place in the National Park system, and teaching kits are being built to demonstrate the importance of the fossil record to our understanding of our natural world.‘At what timescales do communities remain similar or relatively unchanged?’ is a fundamental question that unites biologists, ecologists, and paleontologists, but the varied approaches to answering this question from each scientific community has limited our ability to understand and predict the effect of disturbances on our living communities in light of increasing species extinctions, climate change, and human disturbance. The ultimate goal of this 5-year CAREER proposal is to develop an innovative program that critically evaluates community persistence in the fossil record by integrating quantitative measurements of communities derived from neontological studies, ecological modeling, and paleontological studies. This study provides an explicit framework for testing whether a paleocommunity (=fossil assemblage) is persistent using taphonomic approaches, a suite of quantitative characteristics, new analytical tools (e.g., modeling food webs, likelihood models), and sensitivity and resampling techniques. The research team is analyzing and assimilating taxonomic (e.g., clade-specific) and functional (e.g., ecomorphology) diversity, diet, and phylogenetic community structure in terrestrial vertebrate paleocommunities across 10s of millions of years from localities that span the Triassic-Jurassic boundary. The outcomes of this study include: 1) enhancement of our ability to understand the interplay of taxonomic and functional diversity, macroevolution, and community structure; 2) elucidation of the transformation of Triassic to Jurassic paleocommunities; and 3) insights into the functional roles of the survivors before and after a broad scale perturbation. Macroevolution, ecology, and environmental change in deep time are combined into teaching, student mentorship, and broad public programs at local, regional, and national levels. An all-immersive Discoveries in Geosciences (DIG) Field School is training K-12 teachers in the scientific process of a historical science, and this program is producing paleontology-inspired activities (e.g., 3D printable fossils) for K-12 students at the national level.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

生态学的一个主要目标是了解社区如何在短（季节到几十年）和长（数千年到数百万年）的时间尺度上对微小和重大的环境变化做出反应。很明显，有些群落比其他群落更好，有些群落似乎持续了数百万年。该项目将用于研究生物群落的生态工具与用于研究灭绝群落的工具相结合，这些灭绝群落只能使用化石记录重建，以了解群落是否以及如何在长时间范围内持续存在。该项目旨在描述和重建三叠纪末期大灭绝之前的三叠纪最后2000万年（2.52 - 2亿年前）的脊椎动物群落。这些三叠纪脊椎动物群落对于了解现存脊椎动物群落很重要，因为它们在快速和渐进的气候变化中似乎是静止的。研究这些社区将有助于回答：是什么使社区在短期和长期环境变化期间取得成功？这些大变革的幸存者是那些早期成功社区的产物吗？这些问题正在通过新的化石和与之相关的地质数据的测量，重新分析以前发现的化石，以及基于模型的方法来描述数百万年地质时期社区成员的相互作用来解决。研究工作正在与地方、区域和国家各级的教育活动相结合，研究生和本科生以及感兴趣的志愿人员正在接受培训。一个经验丰富的K-12教师实地学校正在国家公园系统中进行，教学工具包正在建设中，以展示化石记录对我们理解自然世界的重要性。在什么时间尺度上社区保持相似或相对不变？是一个基本的问题，团结生物学家，生态学家和古生物学家，但不同的方法来回答这个问题，从每个科学界限制了我们的能力，以了解和预测的影响，干扰对我们的生活社区鉴于日益增加的物种灭绝，气候变化和人类干扰。这个为期5年的职业生涯建议的最终目标是开发一个创新的计划，通过整合来自新生物学研究，生态建模和古生物学研究的社区的定量测量，批判性地评估社区在化石记录中的持久性。这项研究提供了一个明确的框架，用于测试是否古群落（=化石组合）是持久的使用埋藏方法，一套定量特征，新的分析工具（例如，食物网建模、似然模型）以及灵敏度和恢复技术。研究小组正在分析和吸收分类学（例如，进化枝特异性的）和功能性的（例如，生态形态学）的多样性，饮食，和系统发育群落结构的陆生脊椎动物古群落跨越10亿年的地方，跨越三叠纪-侏罗纪边界。这项研究的成果包括：1）增强我们理解分类和功能多样性，宏观进化和群落结构的相互作用的能力; 2）阐明三叠纪到侏罗纪古群落的转变; 3）深入了解大规模扰动前后幸存者的功能作用。宏观进化，生态学和环境变化在深时间结合到教学，学生辅导，并在地方，区域和国家层面的广泛的公共计划。一个全沉浸式的地球科学发现（DIG）现场学校正在培训K-12教师在历史科学的科学过程中，这个计划正在产生古生物学启发的活动（例如，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

项目成果

Widespread azendohsaurids (Archosauromorpha, Allokotosauria) from the Late Triassic of western USA and India

• DOI: 10.1002/spp2.1413
• 发表时间: 2021-12
• 期刊: Papers in Palaeontology
• 影响因子: 2.3
• 作者: S. Nesbitt;M. Stocker;M. Ezcurra;N. Fraser;A. Heckert;W. Parker;B. Mueller;S. Sengupta;S. Bandyopadhyay;A. Pritchard;A. Marsh

Masticatory mechanisms, dental function, and diet in Triassic trilophosaurids (Reptilia: Allokotosauria)

• DOI: 10.18476/pale.v16.a4
• 发表时间: 2023-01-01
• 期刊: Palaeodiversity
• 作者: Mellett, Michael P.;Kligman, Ben T.;Stocker, Michelle R.
• 通讯作者: Stocker, Michelle R.

First Occurrence of Doswellia cf. D. Kaltenbachi (Archosauriformes) from the Late Triassic (Middle Norian) Chinle Formation of Arizona and Its Implications on Proposed Biostratigraphic Correlations across North America during the Late Triassic

• DOI: 10.1080/02724634.2021.1976196
• 发表时间: 2021-05
• 期刊: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
• 影响因子: 1.4
• 作者: W. Parker;S. Nesbitt;A. Marsh;B. Kligman;K. Bader

Cranial functional morphology of the pseudosuchian Effigia and implications for its ecological role in the Triassic

• DOI: 10.1002/ar.24827
• 发表时间: 2021-11
• 期刊: The Anatomical Record
• 作者: J. Bestwick;Andrew S. Jones;S. Nesbitt;S. Lautenschlager;E. Rayfield;A. Cuff;David J. Button;P. Barrett;Laura B. Porro;R. Butler

Puercosuchus traverorum n. gen. n. sp.: a new malerisaurine azendohsaurid (Archosauromorpha: Allokotosauria) from two monodominant bonebeds in the Chinle Formation (Upper Triassic, Norian) of Arizona

普埃尔科鳄 (Puercosuchus traverorum)

• DOI: 10.1017/jpa.2022.49
• 发表时间: 2022
• 期刊: Journal of Paleontology
• 影响因子: 1.4
• 作者: Marsh, Adam D.;Parker, William G.;Nesbitt, Sterling J.;Kligman, Ben T.;Stocker, Michelle R.
• 通讯作者: Stocker, Michelle R.