1987 — 1991 |
Kammer, Thomas |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Systematics, Paleoecology, and Extinction of Late Osagean Crinoids From Iowa, Illinois and Missouri @ West Virginia University
The proposed study involves both a detailed systematic revision of the crinoids from the late Osagean (Mississippian) Keokuk Limestone and the basal part of the Warsaw Formation in Iowa, Illinois, and Missouri, and a study of their depositional settings. Crinoids from the Keokuk and basal Warsaw have not received study in the latter half of this century, despite the fact that crinoids of this age in other areas are well understood, and these faunas are from the North American Standard Section of the Mississippian. Re.evaluation of these faunas will complete our understanding of the systematics, community paleoecology, and depositional occurrences of crinoid faunas from the late Osagean throughout the east.central United States. This in turn will enable us to interpret the constraints and controlling factors that were responsible for the distribution of late Osagean crinoids. We will test these new data against the environmental controls model, which is based on multivariate analysis of late Osagean crinoid faunas from the Borden deltaic complex in Indiana and Kentucky. Documentation of controlling factors operating on late Osagean crinoids is essential for a fundamental understanding of Paleozoic crinoids. The Osagean was witness to the maximum diversity known among crinoids, and yet at the close of the Osagean, crinoids suffered extreme extinction. Crinoid faunas after the terminal Osagean extinction were very different in taxonomic character and remained basically the same from the recovery following the extinction event until the terminal Paleozoic mass extinction. Results from the proposed study are prerequisite for posing larger questions on the evolution of Paleozoic crinoids.
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0.961 |
2002 — 2006 |
Kammer, Thomas |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Evolutionary Success in Marine Invertebrates: Testing the Relationships Between Eurytopy, Longevity, and Geographic Range in Carboniferous Crinoids @ West Virginia University Research Corporation
COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Evolutionary Success in Marine Invertebrates: Testing the Relationships between Eurytopy, Longevity, and Geographic Range in Carboniferous Crinoids
This study will focus on the role of environmental and biogeographic factors in the evolutionary success of crinoids (echinoderms), one the most diverse and abundant groups of marine invertebrates during the Paleozoic. Lower Carboniferous (354 to 314 m.y. ago) rocks record the peak of crinoid generic diversity during their evolutionary history. Evolutionary success is measured by taxonomic longevity in the fossil record. Current understanding of reasons for evolutionary success is incomplete, but available evidence indicates a positive correlation with environmental breadth (eurytopy) and geographic range. Data supporting this correlation are limited for Paleozoic marine invertebrates. Thus, analysis of Early Carboniferous crinoids, where preliminary work supports such a correlation, will more rigorously test the correlation and broaden our understanding of the relationships between eurytopy, longevity, and geographic range in marine invertebrates. The research will compare the average stratigraphic (longevity), environmental (eurytopy), and geographic ranges of genera within crinoid groups (suborders) between North America and Europe, the two regions with the best fossil record. The study will include the Kinderhookian to early Meramecian epochs of the Mississippian Period (Early Carboniferous) of North America and the equivalent Tournaisian to middle Visean epochs of the Early Carboniferous of western Europe. Stratigraphic and geographic ranges of genera will be determined by evaluating all known species for correct generic assignment. Simultaneously, data on environmental distribution will be tabulated for genera on both continents to calculate a eurytopy index value for each genus, both intracontinental and intercontinental. Results of this investigation will bear directly on evolutionary theory as it endeavors to explain the history of life on Earth. The extensive data set derived from this study will help elucidate the roles of environment and geography in determining generic longevity and, ultimately, group longevity in defining evolutionary success.
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0.961 |
2011 — 2016 |
Kammer, Thomas |
N/AActivity Code Description: No activity code was retrieved: click on the grant title for more information |
Collaborative Research: Assembling the Echinoderm Tree of Life @ West Virginia University Research Corporation
Echinoderms include familiar animals such as starfishes, sea urchins, and a wide array of extinct forms stretching back to the Cambrian Period, circa 500 million years ago. Echinoderms share a common ancestor with backboned animals and thus provide a crucial link to understanding a huge portion of the entire tree of life as well as the history of our species. This project, the Echinoderm Tree of Life Project, will resolve the phylogenetic placement of Echinoderms within the tree of life and clarify important unresolved relationships among major echinoderm lineages using data from genetic sequencing and anatomy.
Echinoderms are fascinating, and their unique features, such as mutable ligaments and novel means of detecting light, have biomedical engineering applications. Because research on such marine animals and their adaptations is naturally attractive to young people, excellent students are expected to be recruited and the importance of science will be communicated to a broad audience. Long-term impacts, embodied by scientific publications, textbooks, anatomical and genomic data, and extensive pages in the Tree of Life and Encyclopedia of Life web projects, will provide resources to researchers and educators. Outreach will include videos and broadcasts about marine exploration and applications of fundamental biological research across the biomedical sciences.
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0.961 |