Podcast 211 - Fossil Ecological Networks

The gang talks about two papers that look at changes in ecological interactions through deep time. The first paper looks at how ecological networks changed from the Permian into the Triassic, and the second paper looks at how echinoid diversity patterns compare to echinoid predation patterns. Meanwhile, James has some choice words about Elon Musk, Amanda’s stream is torn “into pieces”, and Curt once again would really like to start the second half of the podcast…

Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition):

Our friends talk about how animals and things that are not animals can build a place to live together, and how that changes over time. The first paper looks at how the places these animals and not animals build can change when things get really bad. It looks at two places in the past and uses numbers to see how these places change by getting more busy or less busy. They find that before most of the times when lots of stuff died, the places built by these animals and not animals were getting easy to fall to pieces. This is not true for this one time where things go really bad though, which is interesting and means that what was happening when things got really bad must be different.

The second paper looks at how a round animal in the water with hard hurt causing parts have changed over time and tries to see if being eaten caused some change. The paper finds that there are some changes that happen when we see these things get eaten, but also a lot of the changes are happening before we see these things get eaten.

References:

Petsios, Elizabeth, et al. "An  asynchronous Mesozoic marine revolution: the Cenozoic intensification of  predation on echinoids." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1947 (2021): 20210400.

Huang, Yuangeng, et al. "Ecological  dynamics of terrestrial and freshwater ecosystems across three  mid-Phanerozoic mass extinctions from northwest China." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1947 (2021): 20210148.