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Niche partitioning among the Mesozoic echinoderms: biotic vs abiotic traits

  • S. I. Geology of Africa
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Abstract

Although niche partitioning is distinctly difficult to be quantitatively measured, the fossil record can provide the necessary archive for detecting and measuring niche differentiation at different spatial and temporal scales. The consequences of the evolution of the durophagous predators in the Mesozoic Era are well documented among many invertebrates such as mollusks and brachiopods. However, they are less characterized among the echinoderms. In order to assess the consequence of increased predation on the echinoderms and to find the causality between their diversity/dispersion and the sea level variations, the echinoderm occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database was spatiotemporally analyzed. The results indicated that life habit, diet, and locomotion of the echinoderm communities have undergone a major shift. Indeed, a steady trend of increasing the mobile and infaunal taxa, which is a well-known predator-resistant life mode, was observed. In addition, a significant positive correlation was found between carnivores and both of mobile and infaunal taxa (R = 0.70 and 0.56 respectively, p < 0.001), which indicates that mobility and infaunalization provide the opportunity to avoid predation. Moreover, there was a temporal shift in the latitudinal diversity gradient where the diversity peak occurs mainly between 10 and 40 N. Furthermore, there is a general concordance between the echinoderm diversity and the Mesozoic sea level curve. Cluster analyses and nonmetric multidimensional scaling (nMDS) indicated that with increasing sea level, the fauna which was distinct among the different geographic provinces in the Triassic became more similar during the Cretaceous. The latter suggests that sea level is a major factor controlling the biogeographic pattern of the benthic invertebrates.

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Acknowledgments

Two anonymous reviewers are acknowledged for their constructive comments. This contribution is based on data from the Paleobiology Database (http://paleobiodb.org/#/); therefore, we acknowledge all of the contributors to this database (e.g., Wolfgang Kiessling, Loic Villier, Franz Fürsich, Mark Patzkowsky, and Andrew Smith). This is PBDB official publication #376.

Funding

This work was supported by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH/Centre for International Migration and Development (CIM), Germany (grant number 41704).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Geology Department, Faculty of Science, Minia University, 61519, El–Minia, Egypt

    Ahmed Awad Abdelhady

  2. Department of Mathematics, College of Science, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Saudi Arabia

    Abdelhafeez Ahmed Elshekhipy

  3. Basic & Applied Scientific Research Center, Imam Abdulrahman Bin Faisal University, P.O. Box 1982, Dammam, 31441, Saudi Arabia

    Abdelhafeez Ahmed Elshekhipy

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  1. Ahmed Awad Abdelhady
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Correspondence to Ahmed Awad Abdelhady.

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This article is part of the Topical Collection on New Advances and Research Results on the Geology of Africa.

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ESM 1

Occurrence and range data of the Mesozoic echinoderms. (XLSX 638 kb)

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The Mathematica 10 code used for analyzing the dataset. (PDF 9489 kb)

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Abdelhady, A.A., Elshekhipy, A.A. Niche partitioning among the Mesozoic echinoderms: biotic vs abiotic traits. Arab J Geosci 13, 882 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-020-05908-4

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