The ecology of Paleozoic terrestrial arthropods: the fossil evidence

Abstract

The available fossil evidence for the ecology of terrestrial arthropods in the Paleozoic is reviewed and reinterpreted. Some original data are provided, derived mainly from the detailed morphology of mouthparts, genitalia, cuticular vestiture, and body form. Paleozoic chelicerates were more diverse than their modern descendants and were probably dominant ground-level and arboreal predators. Web-building spiders and highly diversified mites appear to have been absent. Paleozoic myriapods include possibly the earliest land animals, and as abundant detritivores, provided a major conduit for primary productivity into higher trophic levels. Paleozoic insects present many difficulties of interpretation, but appear to have been extraordinarily diverse and may have played quite different ecological roles from today's insects, viewed as a whole. It is postulated that herbivory, defined as predation on living plants, may have been rare in early Paleozoic terrestrial ecosystems, and that most primary productivity was funneled through detritivores and decomposers. In the late Paleozoic, the evidence for herbivory by insects, except for feeding on fructifications, is rare. Insects seem to have played a major part as a selective force on plant fructifications.