Recognition and interpretation of predatory traces in echinoid skeletons: towards the evolution of predator-prey systems in ecologically important echinoid taxa

棘虫是海洋底栖生态系统的重要生态组成部分。特别是在许多浅水生境中，不规则的棘类类群（clypeasteroids和spatangoids）发挥了重要作用。这些丰富的沉积物捕食者通过回收和通风上层沉积物层，从而为水生生物创造含氧沉积物，充当生态系统工程师的角色。此外，泥鳅和蛛形纲在生态学上都很重要，因为它们代表了各种脊椎动物和无脊椎动物的主要食物来源。然而，尽管棘足类动物在软底环境中具有很高的保存潜力和重要的生态意义，但它们的捕食-猎物关系仍未得到充分的研究。对棘目动物与捕食者相互作用的有限理解，阻碍了我们充分评估它们在现代生态系统中的生态相关性，并通过它们的进化史来评估生物相互作用的重要性。该项目旨在研究热带和亚热带浅水栖息地的棘足类生物群落，重点关注(1)捕食者和猎物光谱，(2)与捕食者相关的痕迹，以及(3)基于棘足类动物遗骸留下的痕迹对捕食者种群进行建模。因此，该项目的一个组成部分是鉴定、识别和编目捕食者与棘足类动物的相互作用和相关的痕迹。这些发现将提高我们解释棘足类动物生态作用的能力，并使我们能够通过这些棘足类动物的地质历史更可靠地研究生物相互作用的进化和宏观生态方面。此外，由于许多棘足类捕食者是隐蔽的或很少作为化石保存下来，记录棘足类捕食者产生的痕迹可能使我们能够发现它们在古代和现代生态系统中的存在。这项基础研究将为独立的、基于棘皮动物的两大概念假设——“升级假设”和“中生代海洋革命假设”——的检验提供方法论基础，这两大概念假设最初是用软体动物提出和检验的。

Echinoids are an important ecological component of marine benthic ecosystems. In particular, the irregular echinoid taxa of clypeasteroids and spatangoids play a significant role in many shallow-water habitats. These abundant deposit feeders act as ecosystem engineers by recycling and ventilating the upper sediment layers and thus creating an oxygenated sediments for infaunal organisms. In addition, clypeasteroids and spatangoids are both ecologically important by representing a major food source for diverse vertebrates and invertebrates. However, despite the high preservation potential of echinoid remains and the ecological importance of clypeasteroids and spatangoids in soft-bottom environments, their predator-prey relationships remain underexplored. The limited understanding of echinoid-predator interactions hampers our ability to fully assess their ecological relevance in modern ecosystems and evaluate the importance of biotic interactions through their evolutionary history.The proposed project aims to investigate echinoid communities from shallow-water habitats in tropical and subtropical settings focusing on (1) predator and prey spectra, (2) predator-associated traces, and (3) modeling of predator populations based on traces they leave in the echinoid remains. An integral part of the project is thus the identification, recognition and cataloging of predator-echinoid interactions and associated traces. The gained findings will improve our ability to interpret the ecological role of echinoids and enable us to investigate more reliably the evolutionary and macroecological aspects of biotic interactions through the geological history of these echinoids. Moreover, because many echinoid predators are cryptic or rarely preserve as fossils, recorded traces produced by echinoid predators may allow us to detect their presence in ancient and present-day ecosystems. This basic research will provide a methodological foundation for independent, echinoid-based tests of two major conceptual hypotheses, “Escalation Hypothesis” and “Mesozoic Marine Revolution Hypothesis”, originally developed and tested using mollusks.