Collaborative Research: The Evolutionary Significance of Biotic Interactions: A Comparative Study utilizing Echinoid Associated Traces

捕食者经常在猎物的骨骼上留下明显的痕迹，包括牙印、骨折、疤痕和钻孔。包含这些明显标记的化石可以用来探索数百万年来捕食的作用。到目前为止，对捕食的化石记录的研究主要集中在软体动物：蜗牛、文蛤及其近亲。拟议的项目将扩大软体动物以外的捕食历史，并评估捕食对海胆、沙鱼和其他棘形动物的影响。棘球类是一类具有重要商业价值的动物，也是许多海洋捕食者的主要食物来源。该项目旨在开发一个全球参考系统，以确定捕食者在棘球动物猎物上留下的痕迹，预计这将促进对现代和古代生态系统的棘球动物研究。一旦组装完成，数据库将被用于研究捕食者对过去1亿年来棘球动物进化的影响，在此期间，它们已经多样化，并成为海洋生物圈的重要组成部分。新生物博物馆的收藏品将与文献一起用于编码各种类型相互作用(捕食、寄生、共生等)的痕迹特征。会影响到现代棘球类动物。由此产生的数据库将包括有关痕迹制造者的身份/生态、受影响的棘球藻类的身份/生态/系统发育以及痕迹的形态、频率和分布的数据。然后，该数据库将被用于探索化石记录，并评估关于影响棘齿类动物生态和进化史的选定类型的生物相互作用的相对进化重要性的假说。结果将通过博物馆活动、中学生活动工具包和佛罗里达州自然历史博物馆教师资源计划的教学工具公开获得。

Predators often leave distinct marks on prey skeletons, including tooth marks, fractures, scars, and drill holes. Fossils that contain those distinct marks can be used to explore the role of predation over the span of millions of years. To date, research on the fossil record of predation has centered mainly on mollusks: snails, clams, and their relatives. The proposed project will expand the history of predation beyond mollusks, and assess the impact of predation on sea urchins, sand dollars, and other echinoids. Echinoids are a commercially important group of animals and a major food source for many marine predators. This project aims to develop a global reference system for identifying traces left by predators on echinoid prey, which is expected to stimulate echinoid research on both modern and ancient ecosystems. Once assembled, the database will then be used to study the impact of predators on the evolution of echinoids over the last 100 million years, during which, they have diversified and become a critical part of the marine biosphere.Neontological museum collections in conjunction with the literature will be used to codify trace characteristics of various types of interactions (predation, parasitism, commensalism, etc.) that affect modern echinoids. The resultant database will include data on the identity/ecology of trace makers, identity/ecology/phylogeny of affected echinoids, and morphology, frequency, and distribution of traces. The database will then be used to explore the fossil record, and evaluate hypotheses regarding the relative evolutionary importance of select types of biotic interactions affecting the ecology and evolutionary history of echinoids.Results will be publicly available through museum activities, activity kits for middle school students, and teaching tools in the Florida Museum of Natural History Educator Resource program.