Mitchell, EG;
Pates, S;
(2025)
From organisms to biodiversity: the ecology of the Ediacaran/Cambrian transition.
Paleobiology
, 51
(1)
pp. 150-173.
10.1017/pab.2024.21.
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Abstract
The Ediacaran/Cambrian transition (ECT; ~575-500 Ma) captures the early diversification of animals, including the oldest crown-group taxa of most major animal phyla alive today. Key to understanding the drivers underneath the ECT macroevolutionary patterns are the interactions of animals with one another and their environment, and how these interactions scale up to global diversity patterns. Understanding the ecology of ECT organisms is enabled by the abundance of Lagerstätten over this time period, with a relatively large proportion of soft-bodied organisms preserved, often within the communities in which they lived. Here, we review our understanding of organismal, community, and macroecology of the ECT, and how these different scales of ecological analyses relate to the macroevolutionary diversification patterns we see over this 75 Myr time period. Across all ecological scales, we find clear trends, starting with stochastic ecosystem dynamics dominated by generalist taxa in the first Ediacaran communities, to more structured, niche-driven specialist dynamics by Cambrian Epoch 2. These trends are reflected in organism functional morphology, the complexity and strength of organisms' interactions within their communities, and large-scale metacommunity, biogeographic, and biodiversity patterns. Yet there is often a time delay between the origination of a new type of ecological interaction and when it is observed to impact the ecosystem as a whole. As such, while many modern ecological innovations were in place by the end of the Cambrian, the knock-on effects and complexity of these interactions continued to build up throughout the Phanerozoic, leading to the complex biosphere we have today.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | From organisms to biodiversity: the ecology of the Ediacaran/Cambrian transition |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1017/pab.2024.21 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1017/pab.2024.21 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited. Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Paleontological Society |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Maths and Physical Sciences > Dept of Earth Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10208523 |
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