Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T12:44:01.340Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morphometrics Indicates Giant Ordovician Macluritid Gastropods Switched Life Habit During Ontogeny

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 October 2015

Philip M. Novack-Gottshall  and
Keoki Burton
Philip M. Novack-Gottshall
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, Benedictine University, 5700 College Road, Lisle, IL, 60532, USA,
Keoki Burton
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, Benedictine University, 5700 College Road, Lisle, IL, 60532, USA,
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Paleontologists have long speculated that the bizarre, giant Ordovician gastropods Maclurites Le Sueur, 1818 and Maclurina Ulrich and Scofield, 1897 lived more like suspension-feeding oysters than typical algivorous snails. Geometric and eigenshape morphometrics demonstrate the plausibility of this lifestyle, but with a twist. The apertures of these gastropods were small ellipsoids when young, transitioning rapidly to polygonal morphologies at maturity, with angulations (sinuses) occurring in regions associated with development of mature ctenidia (gills) and enhanced stability on the seafloor. Combined with knowledge of extant suspension-feeding gastropods and functional and phylogenetic analysis of the anatomy of other fossil relatives, this ontogenetic pattern suggests these snails began life as typical mobile algae-grazers, but switched to sedentary suspension-feeders as they aged.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Paleontology , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , September 2014 , pp. 1050 - 1055
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banks, M. R. and Johnson, J. H. 1957. Maclurites and Girvanella in the Gordon River Limestone (Ordovician) of Tasmania. Journal of Paleontology, 31:632–640.Google Scholar
Billings, E. 1865. Paleozoic Fossils. Geological Survey of Canada, 1.Google Scholar
Burnham, K. P. and Anderson, D. R. 2002. Model Selection and Multi-Model Inference: A Practical Information-Theoretic Approach . Springer, New York.Google Scholar
Chaparro, O. R., Thompson, R. J., and Pereda, S. V. 2002. Feeding mechanisms in the gastropod Crepidula fecunda . Marine Ecology Progress Series, 234:171–181.Google Scholar
DeClerck, C. H. 1995. The evolution of suspension feeding in gastropods. Biological Reviews, 70:549–569.Google Scholar
Frýda, J. and Rohr, D. M. 2006. Shell heterostrophy in Early Ordovician Macluritella Kirk, 1927 and its implications for phylogeny and classification of Macluritoidea (Gastropoda). Journal of Paleontology, 80:264–271.Google Scholar
Gubanov, A. P. and Rohr, D. M. 1995. Paleobiogeography of the Macluritidae (Ordovician-Gastropoda), p. 461–464. In Cooper, J. D., Droser, M. L., and Finney, S. C. (eds.), Ordovician Odyssey: Short Papers for the Seventh International Ordovician Symposium on the Ordovician System. Volume 77. The Pacific Section Society for Sedimentary Geology (SEPM), Fullerton, CA.Google Scholar
Krieger, J. D. 2012. A repository of morphometric tools and online morphometric workbenches. www.morpho-tools.net.Google Scholar
Le Sueur, C. A. 1818. Observations on a new genus of fossil shells. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, 1:310–313.Google Scholar
Linsley, R. M. 1977. Some “laws” of gastropod shell form. Paleobiology, 3:196–206.Google Scholar
Linsley, R. M. 1978. Locomotion rates and shell form in the Gastropoda. Malacologia, 17:193–206.Google Scholar
MacLeod, N. 1999. Generalizing and extending the eigenshape method of shape space visualization and analysis. Paleobiology, 25:107–138.Google Scholar
McLean, J. H. 1986. The trochid genus Lirularia Dall, 1909: a filter feeder? The Western Malacological Society Annual Report 1985, 18:24–25.Google Scholar
Morris, P. J. 1991. Functional morphology and phylogeny: an assessment of monophyly in the Kingdom Animalia and Paleozoic nearly-planispiral snail-like mollusks, Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Navarro, J. M. and Chaparro, O. R. 2002. Grazing-filtration as feeding mechanisms in motile specimens of Crepidula fecunda (Gastropoda: Calyptraeidae). Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 270:111–122.Google Scholar
Nelson, S. J. 1959. Arctic Ordovician fauna: an equatorial assemblage. Journal of the Alberta Society of Petroleum Geologists, 7:45–47.Google Scholar
Rohlf, F. J. 2010. tpsDig, digitize landmarks and outlines, v. 2.16, Stony Brook, NY.Google Scholar
Rohr, D. M., Blodgett, R. B., and Furnish, W. M. 1992. Maclurina manitobensis (Whiteaves) (Ordovician Gastropoda): the largest known Paleozoic gastropod. Journal of Paleontology, 66:880–884.Google Scholar
Rohr, D. M. and Measures, E. A. 2001. Middle Ordovician (Whiterockian) gastropods of western Newfoundland: Macluritoidea and Euomphaloidea. Journal of Paleontology, 75:284–294.Google Scholar
Rohr, D. M. and Yochelson, E. L. 1999. Life association of shell and operculum of Middle Ordovician gastropod Maclurites . Journal of Paleontology, 73:1078–1080.Google Scholar
Roy, S. K. 1941. The Upper Ordovician Fauna of Frobisher Bay, Baffin Land . Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, 2, 197 p.Google Scholar
Salter, J. W. 1859. Figures and Descriptions of Canadian Organic Remains . Geological Society of Canada, Montreal, Canada, 47 p.Google Scholar
Team, R. D. C. 2011. R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria.Google Scholar
Ulrich, E. O. and Scofield, W. H. 1897. The Lower Silurian Gastropoda of Minnesota, p. 813–1081, The Geology of Minnesota. Volume 3. Harrison and Smith, Minneapolis, MN.Google Scholar
Voltzow, J., Morris, P. J., and Linsley, R. M. 2004. Anatomy of and patterns of water currents through the mantle cavities of pleurotomariid gastropods. Journal of Morphology, 262:659–666.Google Scholar
Wagner, P. J. 2002. Phylogenetic relationships of the earliest anisostrophically coiled gastropods. Smithsonian Contributions to Paleobiology, 1–132.Google Scholar
Wagner, P. J. and Erwin, D. H. 2006. Patterns of convergence in general shell form among Paleozoic gastropods. Paleobiology, 32:316–337.Google Scholar
Whiteaves, J. F. 1890. Descriptions of eight new species of fossils from the Cambro–Silurian rocks of Manitoba. Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, 7:75–83.Google Scholar
Whitfield, R. P. 1878. Preliminary descriptions of new species of fossils from the lower geological formations of Wisconsin. Annual Report of the Wisconsin Geological Survey, 1877:50–67.Google Scholar