Abstract
Morphologically homogeneous groups, either living populations or fossil paleo-populations, must be regarded as ecological species, independent of their molecular genetic resemblance in living forms. Morphology is always expressed during development by structure genes initiated from a network of regulator genes acting at different times and intensities, additionally being subjected to epigenetic controls. Therefore, homogeneous populations influenced by the environment represent species better than the reproduction (biological species) or molecular-genetic approach using ancestral sequences like rDNA. Living and fossil representatives of nummulitid foraminifera were chosen to demonstrate complete reconstruction of morphology using metrical growth-invariant and growth-independent characters. Using these characters, 6 models were established to define ecological species in living and fossil species. Furthermore, a distinction between evolutionary and environmental effects in fossil forms was possible using discriminant analysis showing characters that are responsible for differentiating between evolutionary and environmental trends.
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Acknowledgments
Primarily we thank the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) for support in many projects, especially by the FWF ‘Functional Shell Morphology of Larger Benthic Foraminifera’ (No. P23459) and ‘Breakthroughs in Growth Studies on Larger Benthic Foraminifera’ (No. P26344-B25). Thanks are due to all coworkers in these projects, namely Antonino Briguglio (University Genova, Italia), Erik Wolfgring (University Milano, Italia), Shunichi Kinoshita (Tsukuba Museum, Japan) and Julia Wöger (Vienna, Austria). We also thank the North-South Dialogue scholarship of the Austrian Exchange Service (OeAD) for supporting AI-TS and Consuelo Diaz Otero, Dora Garcia Delgado and Manuel Iturralde Vinent (Cuba) for helping to sample the Cuban sections. We also thank Stjepan Ćorić (Geological Survey of Austria) for his assistance in species and biozone recognition of calcareous nannofossils. Most investigations on living larger foraminifera were done in Japan supported by JSPS, the Sesoko Marine Station of the Ryukyu University Tropical Research Center and the Kagoshima Research Center for the South Pacific. Special thanks are due to the first author’s good friends Kimihiko Oki (Kagoshima University Museum) and Terufumi Ohno (Kyoto University and Mie Prefectural Museum). All colleagues of the WOLF-group (Working on Larger Foraminifera) inspired Johann Hohenegger to think about species, environmental dependence and growth. Special thanks are due to Rudolf Röttger (formerly Kiel University) who inspired Johann Hohenegger and Wolfgang Eder to work on the biology of larger foraminifera, especially Heterostegina. Open Access funding provided by University of Vienna. The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1567-z.
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Hohenegger, J., Torres-Silva, A.I. & Eder, W. Interpreting Morphologically Homogeneous (Paleo-)Populations as Ecological Species Enables Comparison of Living and Fossil Organism Groups, Exemplified by Nummulitid Foraminifera. J. Earth Sci. 33, 1362–1377 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1567-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12583-021-1567-z