10.
Herbivory in Antarctic Fossil Forests: Evolutionary and Palaeoclimatic
Significance
Personnel
Graduate Student:
Supervisors:
Claire McDonald
Professor Jane Francis
(Earth Sciences, School of Earth and Environment, University
of Leeds) Dr Steve Compton (Ecology and Evolution,
School of Biology, University of Leeds) Dr Alan Haywood (British Antarctic Survey,
Cambridge, UK) Professor Alan Ashworth (North Dakota State
University, USA) Dr. Luis Felipe Hinojosa (Facultad de Ciencias,
Universidad de Chile)
Funding
This project is funded by the Earth
and Biosphere Institute, University of Leeds, and
is a CASE project with the British Antarctic Survey.
Summary
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.
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