ABSTRACT

Collaborative Research: Paleozoic echinoderms as model systems for the study of evolutionary modes

Unraveling the drivers of evolution in the fossil record is critical for understanding how organisms occupy new morphologic, ecologic, and geographic spaces. This information, gleaned from the geologic past across climate perturbations, is vital for understanding and predicting how evolution will operate across the biodiversity and climate crises today. The research team will focus on groups of ancient echinoderms, marine invertebrates (e.g., sea stars) that were globally widespread through Earth?s history. This group is vastly understudied and, as such, analyses conducted on the group will provide critical insight into animal response to Earth systems perturbations. New organismal forms appear through shifts in developmental timing, called heterochrony. What is unclear is how shifts in climate, organism biogeography, and ecology affect heterochronic shifts. This research uses a holistic approach via multiple analyses, addressing changes in ecology, biogeography, and heterochrony through extreme climate events that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago, to explore aspects of organisms? evolutionary history and long-term consequences.

Database, museum, and literature data will be used jointly within phylogenetic frameworks to develop understanding of the evolutionary dynamics (i.e., changes in rates of evolution, heterochrony, biogeography, ecology) of extinct echinoderms. The chief merit of this research is the integration of multiple variables within a phylogenetic context to quantitatively understand broader patterns of evolution through abiotic change on Earth. This project will train the next generation of museum curators, educators, and researchers, and provide open-access information about echinoderms. Training will be conducted through undergraduate summer workshops on museum research techniques. Open access information about the echinoderm clades studied in this project will be published on the Digital Atlas of Ancient Life?s paleontology open access textbook. Echinoderm resources, created through this project and from previous works, will be collated on a WikiProject into one central hub for current and future echinoderm paleobiology researchers.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

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