Student: Claire McDonald
Supervisors:
Jane Francis, Earth Sciences, School of Earth and Environment, Leeds University, UK
Steve Compton, Ecology and Evolution, School of Biology, Leeds University, UK
Alan Haywood, British Antarctic Survey, Cambridge, UK
Alan Ashworth, North Dakota State University, USA
Luis Felipe Hinojosa, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Chile
Project start: 2005
This is a CASE project with the British Antarctic Survey.
Insects form an important part of modern ecosystems, but their remains are rarely preserved in the fossil record. Aspects of their ecology can nonetheless be discerned from trace fossils, which represent a largely unexploited store of information about ancient plant-insect interactions, palaeoclimates, biogeography and evolution.
Fossil leaves and wood of Cenozoic age from Antarctica contain a rich store of insect trace fossils. These include galls, mines and feeding traces on fossil leaves, plus frass-filled borings within fossil wood. They show that insects were an important component of the unique forests that grew in polar regions. How different were these polar insects from those that feed on related trees today? Was the diversity and the extent of damage similar? What can they tell about the evolution of herbivory and about ancient climates, particularly the critical greenhouse to icehouse transition and Neogene climate history of Antarctica.
The project will combine quantitative studies of Antarctic fossil plant-animal interactions and contemporary insect faunas. A database of all fossil traces will be compiled (Palaeogene and Neogene) and analysed in terms of the diversity and intensity of palaeo-herbivory. Surveys of insects and their feeding damage on selected living relatives of the fossil plants will be made in Chilean Valdivian rainforests and Magellanic tundra, the closest analogues of Antarctic Cenozoic vegetation. These surveys will suggest potential causal agents for the palaeo-herbivory, show how patterns of herbivory have changed over time, and establish likely climatic envelopes in which fossil insects lived, thereby suggesting boundary conditions for climate modellers.
All fossil samples for this project are available in Leeds, Cambridge and NDSU. Field work will be undertaken in collaboration with colleagues from the University of Chile, Santiago and North Dakota State University (NDSU). The expertise of Dr. Luis Felipe Hinojosa (Chilean vegetation) and Professor Allan Ashworth (fossil insects) will be available for this project.
Some pertinent references:
Ashworth, A, C. and Thompson, F. C. 2003. Palaeontology: a fly in the biogeographic ointment. Nature 423, 135-136.
Compton, S.G., Lawton, J.H. and Rashbrook, V. K. 1989. Regional diversity, local community structure and vacant niches: the herbivorous arthropods of bracken in South Africa. Ecological Entomology 14: 365-373.
Francis, J. E. and Poole, I. 2002. Cretaceous and early Tertiary climates of Antarctica: evidence from fossil wood. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 182, 47-64.
Labandeira, C.C. 2002. The history of associations between plants and animals.Pp.26-74 in Herrara, C.M. and Pellmyr, O. Plant-animal interactions: an evolutionary approach. Blackwell Science. Oxford.
Scott, A.C., Titchener, F.R 1999. Techniques in the study of plant-arthropod interactions. Pp. 310-315 in Jones T.P and Rowe, N.P. (eds.) Fossil plants and spores: modern techniques. Geological Society, London
Strong D.R., Lawton J.H., Southwood, T.R.E. 1984. Insects on plants: community patterns and mechanisms. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,