Decoding the dynamics of dental distributions
- Autor(en)
- Sora L. Kim, Justin D. Yeakel, Meghan A. Balk, Jaelyn J. Eberle, Sarah S. Zeichner, Dina Fieman, Jürgen Kriwet
- Abstrakt
Shark teeth are one of the most abundant vertebrate fossils, and because toothsize generally correlates with body size, their accumulations document thesize structure of populations. Understanding how ecological and environ-mental processes influence size structure, and how this extends to influencethese dental distributions, may offer a window into the ecological andenvironmental dynamics of past and present shark populations. Here, weexamine the dental distributions of sand tigers, including extantCarchariastaurusand extinctStriatolamia macrota, to reconstruct the size structure for acontemporary locality and four Eocene localities. We compare empirical dis-tributions against expectations from a population simulation to gain insightinto potential governing ecological processes. Specifically, we investigate theinfluence of dispersal flexibility to and from protected nurseries. We showthat changing the flexibility of initial dispersal of juveniles from the nurseryand annual migration of adults to the nursery explains a large amount ofdental distribution variability. Our framework predicts dispersal strategiesof an extant sand tiger population, and supports nurseries as importantcomponents of sand tiger life history in both extant and Eocene populations.These results suggest nursery protection may be vital for shark conservationwith increasing anthropogenic impacts and climate change.
- Organisation(en)
- Institut für Paläontologie
- Externe Organisation(en)
- University of California, Merced, National Ecological Observatory Network, University of Colorado, Boulder, Victoria University of Wellington, California Institute of Technology (Caltech)
- Journal
- Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences
- Band
- 289
- Anzahl der Seiten
- 10
- ISSN
- 0962-8452
- Publikationsdatum
- 2022
- Peer-reviewed
- Ja
- ÖFOS 2012
- 105118 Paläontologie
- Link zum Portal
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/675c4d60-04a3-4fd4-b6e2-33d945d1764d