ArticleEcology letters2019
The importance of neutral over niche processes in structuring Ediacaran early animal communities.
Article in Ecology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed.
- The influence of reproductive mode on resource competition and diversity patterns in Ediacaran early animal communities.Nature ecology & evolution · 2026Article
- Co-occurrence structure of late Ediacaran communities and influence of emerging ecosystem engineers.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Morphology shapes community dynamics in early animal ecosystems.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- 'Conga lines' of Ediacaran fronds: insights into the reproductive biology of early metazoans.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- The rangeomorphiScience · 2023Article
- Animal survival strategies in Neoproterozoic ice worlds.Global change biology · 2023Article
- Causes and consequences of end-Ediacaran extinction: An update.Cambridge prisms. Extinction · 2023Review
- Metacommunity analyses show an increase in ecological specialisation throughout the Ediacaran period.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Boom-bust population dynamics increase diversity in evolving competitive communities.Communications biology · 2021Article
- Article
- The influence of environmental setting on the community ecology of Ediacaran organisms.Interface focus · 2020Article
- Reconstructing the ecology of a Jurassic pseudoplanktonic raft colony.Royal Society open science · 2020Article
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
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Abstract
The relative influence of niche vs. neutral processes in ecosystem dynamics is an on-going debate, but the extent to which they structured the earliest animal communities is unknown. Some of the oldest known metazoan-dominated paleocommunities occur in Ediacaran age (~ 565 million years old) strata in Newfoundland, Canada and Charnwood Forest, UK. These comprise large and diverse populations of sessile organisms that are amenable to spatial point process analyses, enabling inference of the most likely underlying niche or neutral processes governing community structure. We mapped seven Ediacaran paleocommunities using LiDAR, photogrammetry and a laser line probe. We found that neutral processes dominate these paleocommunities, with niche processes exerting limited influence, in contrast with the niche-dominated dynamics of modern marine ecosystems. The dominance of neutral processes suggests that early metazoan diversification may not have been driven by systematic adaptations to the local environment, but instead may have resulted from stochastic demographic differences.
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