A 520 million-year-old chelicerate larva

An important survival strategy for animal species is the so-called niche differentiation between larva and adult. Different developmental stages of the same animal occupy different ecological niches to avoid competing for food or other essential resources. Here, we describe an exceptionally preserve...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2014-07, Vol.5 (1), p.4440-4440, Article 4440
Main Authors: Liu, Yu, Haug, Joachim T., Haug, Carolin, Briggs, Derek E. G., Hou, Xianguang
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/158/857
631/181/414
Animals
Arthropods
China
Fossils
Humanities and Social Sciences
Larva
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:An important survival strategy for animal species is the so-called niche differentiation between larva and adult. Different developmental stages of the same animal occupy different ecological niches to avoid competing for food or other essential resources. Here, we describe an exceptionally preserved larval stage of the short great appendage (SGA) arthropod (megacheiran) Leanchoilia illecebrosa from the early Cambrian Chengjiang biota of China. The larval specimen preserves fine details of the main feeding limb, the SGA, which are unknown in the adult of the same species. This discovery demonstrates that niche differentiation during ontogeny was developed in this species of megacheiran—a group of fossil arthropods that has been considered to be early representatives of Chelicerata, which includes horseshoe crabs and arachnids. Hence, this type of niche differentiation, which is common today, originated from the early Cambrian. Modern arthropods present niche differentiation between larvae and adult stages. Here, Liu et al. describe a larval fossil of Leanchoilia illecebrosa , an early Cambrian arthropod from China, and show a feeding appendage, unknown in adults, that suggests that niche differentiation originated in the early Cambrian.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/ncomms5440