ArticlePloS one2012
Gut contents as direct indicators for trophic relationships in the Cambrian marine ecosystem.
Article in PloS one, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Post-Cambrian survival of the tubicolous scalidophoranBiology letters · 2024Article
- The first healed injury in a hyolith operculum.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2023Article
- Article
- A mid-Cambrian tunicate and the deep origin of the ascidiacean body plan.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Muscle systems and motility of early animals highlighted by cnidarians from the basal Cambrian.eLife · 2022Article
- Dawn of complex animal food webs: A new predatory anthozoan (Cnidaria) from Cambrian.Innovation (Cambridge (Mass.)) · 2022Article
- Symbiosis in the Cambrian: enteropneust tubes from the Burgess Shale co-inhabited by commensal polychaetes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Article
- Injuries and molting interference in a trilobite from the Cambrian (Furongian) of South China.PeerJ · 2021Article
- The rise and early evolution of animals: where do we stand from a trace-fossil perspective?Interface focus · 2020Review
- Discovery of bilaterian-type through-guts in cloudinomorphs from the terminal Ediacaran Period.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Origin of ecdysis: fossil evidence from 535-million-year-old scalidophoran worms.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Trace fossils associated with Burgess Shale non-biomineralized carapaces: bringing taphonomic and ecological controls into focus.Royal Society open science · 2019Article
- New suspension-feeding radiodont suggests evolution of microplanktivory in Cambrian macronekton.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Article
- Early Cambrian origin of the shelf sediment mixed layer.Nature communications · 2018Article
- Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- A Novel Extracellular Gut Symbiont in the Marine Worm Priapulus caudatus (Priapulida) Reveals an Alphaproteobacterial Symbiont Clade of the Ecdysozoa.Frontiers in microbiology · 2016Article
- Experimental taphonomy of Artemia reveals the role of endogenous microbes in mediating decay and fossilization.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Article
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1 author.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Present-day ecosystems host a huge variety of organisms that interact and transfer mass and energy via a cascade of trophic levels. When and how this complex machinery was established remains largely unknown. Although exceptionally preserved biotas clearly show that Early Cambrian animals had already acquired functionalities that enabled them to exploit a wide range of food resources, there is scant direct evidence concerning their diet and exact trophic relationships. Here I describe the gut contents of Ottoia prolifica, an abundant priapulid worm from the middle Cambrian (Stage 5) Burgess Shale biota. I identify the undigested exoskeletal remains of a wide range of small invertebrates that lived at or near the water sediment interface such as hyolithids, brachiopods, different types of arthropods, polychaetes and wiwaxiids. This set of direct fossil evidence allows the first detailed reconstruction of the diet of a 505-million-year-old animal. Ottoia was a dietary generalist and had no strict feeding regime. It fed on both living individuals and decaying organic matter present in its habitat. The feeding behavior of Ottoia was remarkably simple, reduced to the transit of food through an eversible pharynx and a tubular gut with limited physical breakdown and no storage. The recognition of generalist feeding strategies, exemplified by Ottoia, reveals key-aspects of modern-style trophic complexity in the immediate aftermath of the Cambrian explosion. It also shows that the middle Cambrian ecosystem was already too complex to be understood in terms of simple linear dynamics and unique pathways.
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