Origins and Early Evolution of Predation

“There is little evidence of macrophagous predation until near the end of the Ediacaran, but Early Cambrian communities show abundant evidence of Phanerozoic-style predation on soft-bodied and skeletal organisms (e.g., Bengtson 2002).”

“, 2006) and changes in continental sediment accumulation during supercontinent amalgamation (Brasier and Lindsay, 2001); (2) developmental innovations, such as the evolution of Hox genes (Peterson and Davidson, 2000; Erwin and Davidson, 2002); and (3) ecological explanations, concerning new trophic capacities, like (a…”

“Typically, these explanations center on the invention of new trophic capacities, whether predation (Evans 1912, Hutchinson 1961, Vermeij 1990, Bengtson 2002) or cropping (e.g., Stanley 1973, 1976), as a major cause of the Cambrian “explosion.””

“About 540 Mya, the world’s fauna underwent a dramatic increase in diversity, called the BCambrian explosion,^ partially driven by advances in predation (Bengtson, 2002; Erwin et al., 2011).”

“Many authors have argued that predation has played a crucial role in structuring communities, especially during the Cambrian explosion (Conway Morris, 1986; Bengtson, 2002; Babcock, 2003).”

“the view that life evolved on land and only reached the sea, and thus could become readily fossilizable in the Cambrian, or that animals adopted a more sluggish mode of life to which hard parts were appropriate—the exact opposite of the more normal ‘arms race’ view of the development of hard parts prevalent today (Ver…”

“Multicellularity does not necessarily imply large body size, but because of the limitations of diffusion rates and streaming in cytoplasm, non-microscopic body size requires multicellularity (or syncytiality, multiple nuclei within a connected cytoplasm, which is functionally equivalent to multicellularity and sometim…”

“Prey with well-honed antipredator responses will have high survival, while predators with low catch rates suffer slower growth and reduced reproductive output [2,3].”

“Further expansion of the eyes and tectum created a spatial map for precise escape behaviour, a key factor in our ancestors’ survival during the explosion of predatory activity during the early Cambrian [49, 50].”

“Among the plethora of new organisms, unequivocal examples of metazoan predators arose, some of which were capable of crushing or drilling biomineralised prey items (Bengtson, 2002; Babcock, 2003; Bush & Bambach, 2011; Leighton, 2011).”

“' Based on nutrient conditions and the evolution of food webs in the Palaeo- and Meso-proterozoic ocean [21,22], it is reasonable to suppose that facultative autotrophy would have been the rule in early photosynthetic organisms.”

“…on their prey are so profound that despite being nearly undetectable in early Cambrian strata, predators appear to have influenced the evolutionary paths of most taxa around them, likely driving the course of the Cambrian Explosion (Bengtson, 2002; Erwin et al., 2011; Sperling et al., 2013).”

“The major function of mineralised tubes was probably protection against predation (Bengston, 2002), but physiological adaptation to changing ocean chemistry and the opportunity to grow larger were also proposed (e.”

“Predation is often suggested as one of the principal forces structuring communities during the Cambrian (Bengtson 2002; Hu et al. 2007; Vannier et al. 2007; Vannier 2012; Laflamme et al. 2013), as well as one of the factors most distinguishing Cambrian communities from the preceding Ediacaran fauna…”

“It was within this context that the macroscopic organisms of the Ediacara biota appeared around 575 Ma (Narbonne and Gehling, 2003), followed at about 550 Ma by the worldwide advent of organisms capable of producing mineralized skeletal parts, putatively in response to the appearance of predators (Germs, 1972; Grant,…”

“Prey species with efficient anti-predator adaptations may have an ecological advantage over more vulnerable prey (Bengston 2002), especially when exposed to the additional environmental stress associated with a changing climate (Allan et al. 2013).”

“The reasons may be preservational (most multicellular organisms, even large ones, in today’s biota are not easily fossilizable), ecological (e.g., weak or absent predatorial selection for size; see Bengtson 2002), or environmental (e.g., low levels of ambient oxygen; see Anbar and Knoll 2002).”

“associated complexities of coevolution (Bengtson 2002).”

“Drivers of disparity in anomalocaridids are related to the variety of available prey [103, 104], but also, probably, to radically different feeding strategies.”

“In the absence of macrophagy, pre-Cambrian animals would have only needed to move according to nutritional, chemical, light or temperature gradients [Bengtson, 2002] and filter water or forage for sustenance.”

“…et al., 2002; Van Iten et al., 2014) in the latest Ediacaran was accompanied by colonization of new habitats, competition for substrate, predation/trophic escalation and increase in ecologic complexity of marine ecosystems (Bengtson, 2002; Wood, 2011; Wood and Curtis, 2014; Penny et al., 2016).”

“The need to hunt prey, or to avoid being killed by predators, has driven the evolutionary trajectories of organisms across the globe [1].”

“In addition, weakly calcified zooplanktonic arthropods are likely to enduremore or less long periods of post-mortem drift (Bengtson, 2002) and also scavenging during their journey to the sea bottom.”

“Among these, predation was likely an important evolutionary shaper of events and morphologies (e.g. Bengtson 2002; Knoll 2003; Wood and Zhuravlev 2012; Erwin and Valentine 2013; Sperling et al. 2013; Zhang et al. 2014; Bicknell and Paterson 2018).”

“Predation plays a crucial role in current ecosystems worldwide in that it expands food webs, redistributes resources, and promotes evolution (e.g., Bengtson, 2002).”

“More plausibly, predation (Stanley 1973; Bengtson 2002; Dzik 2007) and the development of vertical burrowing and bioturbation (McIlroy and Logan 1999; Bottjer et al. 2000; Jensen et al. 2005; Erwin and Valentine 2013) have been seen as ecological innovations that could have triggered positive…”

“The Cambrian Explosion was followed by three major extinction events and then the Great Ordovician Biodiversification Event (GOBE), a continuation of the earliest diversification of animals.”

“…major component of evolution during the Cambrian Explosion and that escalated predation pressures drove the variety of defensive features in prey (Vermeij, 1989; Bengtson, 2002; Brett & Walker, 2002; Babcock, 2003; Marshall, 2006; Vendrasco et al., 2011; Wood & Zhuravlev, 2012; Voje et al., 2015).”

“Predators are, of course, a hallmark of the Phanerozoic, and their rise from the Ediacaran to the Cambrian plays a role in many ecological explanations of the Cambrian explosion (Evans 1912; Hutchinson 1961; Stanley 1973; Vermeij 1990; Bengtson and Zhao 1992; Bengtson 2002; Marshall 2006).”

“Early animal predators may have then forced the first complex animals to explore new biotopes and behaviors and thereby encouraged morphological diversification (reviewed in ref.((52))).”

“Coevolution between organisms and their predators had led to an intensification of the struggle for existence and increased complexity of organisms during the Cambrian explosion interval (Fortey and Briggs, 1996; Pratt, 1998; Bengtson, 2002; Zhang et al., 2008a).”

“This phenomenon of predation has evolved independently, multiple times across all known major lineages of life, both extinct and extant [1,2,4].”

“There have been several explanations for the dramatic change in life on Earth at the dawn of the Cambrian but predation has been most frequently invoked as an influence (Evans 1912; Hutchinson 1961; Vermeij 1989, 2002) although both Bengtson (2002) and Marshall (2006) considered predation as a shaper of the events, ra…”

“The long Phanerozoic record of drilling predation in brachiopod and other shells (Kowalewski, Dulai & Fürsich, 1998; Bengtson, 2002; Hua, Pratt & Zhang, 2003) is not evidence of selection pressure favouring ab initio shell mineralization, because both chemical and mechanical drilling mechanisms in predators imply the…”

“Origin and expansion of macrophagous predation Predation appeared early in eukaryote evolution.(35) Biomineralized skeletons of protists dated to at least 700 Ma (e.”

“The Terreneuvian also records the first appearance of a new group of metazoan predators — chaeto-gnaths — into the pelagic realm (Szaniawski 1983, 2002; Vannier 2007) and the earliest evidence for durophagous predation (Bengtson 1968; Conway Morris and Bengtson 1994), while the number of predatory…”

“A major consequence of the evolution of movement, which added new selection pressures, was the flourishing of predation as a survival strategy [18] – instead of capturing the Sun’s energy or scavenging on organic material formed from dead remains, now animals could chase and eat each other.”

“Such a lack of predators for somewhere between 1–3 billion years is a Garden of Eden (or Shangri-La, [4]), and is reminiscent of ‘‘The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the bullock’’ (Isa 65:25).”

“Scattered evidence of macrophagous predation exists from the Neoproterozoic (Bengtson 2002), but a stepwise increase in predation influence is currently documented in (A) the Cambrian early Paleozoic marine revolution (Babcock 2003), (B) the Devonian – Permian middle Paleozoic revolution (MPR) (Brett and Walker 2002),…”

“Because predation is foundational to life (Bengtson, 2002) and most animals evolved with a wide range of predators and predatory behaviors, the sweeping claim that animals are unusually vulnerable to introduced predators requires a biological mechanism.”

“Predation likely first evolved when the first unicellular life forms appeared and have since evolved independently many times across all domains and many kingdoms of life (Bengtson, 2002).”

“varying ocean chemistry [75] or predation pressure [76].”

“Predatory behavior probably originated many times and fossil evidence of predation is documented in the oldest skeletal organisms (Bengtson & Zhao 1992), though predation itself is likely to be much older (Bengtson 2002).”

“From the advent of protective biomineralized shells in the latest Neoproterozoic and early Cambrian, breakage and trace fossils record predator–prey interactions (e.g., Bengtson and Conway Morris, 1992; Bengtson, 1994, 2002; Hua et al., 2003).”

“2001; Bout 2003; Homberger 2003; Kardong 2015; Wake 2015). In all of the chapters in this volume, the term “function” refers to the “biological role” of themorphological traits (Irschick andHigham2016) in the broadest sense. “Biological role”, is defined by Irschick and Higham (2016) as “the action that natural select…”

“The final decline of stromatolites in the late Neoproterozoic may also be related to grazing pressure (see discussion in Bengtson, 2002).”

“Among them are the first known examples of predation and biomineralization (Porter and Knoll 2000; Bengtson, 2002; Porter 2004; Knoll et al.”

“…have started as early as in the Precambrian and is also broadly accepted as one of the plausible evolutionary triggers for both the Cambrian biodiversity explosion (e.g., Bengtson, 2002; Wood & Zhuravlev, 2012; Zhang et al., 2014), and the Mesozoic Marine Evolution (e.g., Vermeij, 1977, 1987).”

“determining the timing and the level of organismal complexity associated with fundamental transitions such as the appearance of predation is still debated [27, 28].”

“This may have been as a response to the growing challenge posed by the development of grazing biota in open-marine waters during early Cambrian time (Bengtson, 2002).”