Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction
Generalities of food web structure have been identified for extant ecosystems. However, the trophic organization of ancient ecosystems is unresolved, as prior studies of fossil webs have been limited by low-resolution, high-uncertainty data. We compiled highly resolved, well-documented feeding inter...
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| Format: | Online |
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The Royal Society
2014
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973268/ |
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pubmed-39732682014-05-07 Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction Dunne, Jennifer A. Labandeira, Conrad C. Williams, Richard J. Research Articles Generalities of food web structure have been identified for extant ecosystems. However, the trophic organization of ancient ecosystems is unresolved, as prior studies of fossil webs have been limited by low-resolution, high-uncertainty data. We compiled highly resolved, well-documented feeding interaction data for 700 taxa from the 48 million-year-old latest early Eocene Messel Shale, which contains a species assemblage that developed after an interval of protracted environmental and biotal change during and following the end-Cretaceous extinction. We compared the network structure of Messel lake and forest food webs to extant webs using analyses that account for scale dependence of structure with diversity and complexity. The Messel lake web, with 94 taxa, displays unambiguous similarities in structure to extant webs. While the Messel forest web, with 630 taxa, displays differences compared to extant webs, they appear to result from high diversity and resolution of insect–plant interactions, rather than substantive differences in structure. The evidence presented here suggests that modern trophic organization developed along with the modern Messel biota during an 18 Myr interval of dramatic post-extinction change. Our study also has methodological implications, as the Messel forest web analysis highlights limitations of current food web data and models. The Royal Society 2014-05-07 /pmc/articles/PMC3973268/ /pubmed/24648225 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2013.3280 Text en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ © 2014 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Dunne, Jennifer A. Labandeira, Conrad C. Williams, Richard J. |
| spellingShingle |
Dunne, Jennifer A. Labandeira, Conrad C. Williams, Richard J. Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| author_facet |
Dunne, Jennifer A. Labandeira, Conrad C. Williams, Richard J. |
| author_sort |
Dunne, Jennifer A. |
| title |
Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| title_short |
Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| title_full |
Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| title_fullStr |
Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Highly resolved early Eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-Cretaceous extinction |
| title_sort |
highly resolved early eocene food webs show development of modern trophic structure after the end-cretaceous extinction |
| description |
Generalities of food web structure have been identified for extant ecosystems. However, the trophic organization of ancient ecosystems is unresolved, as prior studies of fossil webs have been limited by low-resolution, high-uncertainty data. We compiled highly resolved, well-documented feeding interaction data for 700 taxa from the 48 million-year-old latest early Eocene Messel Shale, which contains a species assemblage that developed after an interval of protracted environmental and biotal change during and following the end-Cretaceous extinction. We compared the network structure of Messel lake and forest food webs to extant webs using analyses that account for scale dependence of structure with diversity and complexity. The Messel lake web, with 94 taxa, displays unambiguous similarities in structure to extant webs. While the Messel forest web, with 630 taxa, displays differences compared to extant webs, they appear to result from high diversity and resolution of insect–plant interactions, rather than substantive differences in structure. The evidence presented here suggests that modern trophic organization developed along with the modern Messel biota during an 18 Myr interval of dramatic post-extinction change. Our study also has methodological implications, as the Messel forest web analysis highlights limitations of current food web data and models. |
| publisher |
The Royal Society |
| publishDate |
2014 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3973268/ |
| _version_ |
1612073331866992640 |