PhD: Eco-evolutionary dynamics of early animals

Life has existed on Earth for more than 3.5 billion years, but it is only around 600 million years ago, during the Ediacaran time period (635 – 541 Ma), that animals appear in the rock record. It is during the Ediacaran animals evolved some of their most important traits: most obviously large body-size but also tissue-differentiation, mobility, bilateral symmetry and ecosystem engineering (reef-building). Over the last ten years, mathematical ecological approaches have demonstrated how previously elusive biological details can be extracted from the Ediacaran fossil record. This proposal will tap into the exceptionally rich biological information captured in the Ediacaran fossil record and use using mathematical models to investigate the underlying processes that drive the evolution of early animals.

The student will have access to an extensive photographic and laser-scan data dataset of Ediacaran communities and use this data alongside existing analyses to document life-history traits such as reproductive modes and the strength and extent of environmental and competitive interactions within and between species within these communities. They will use this information to parameterise different types of models, and explore how changing different variables, such as the proportion of sexual to asexual reproduction, or the extent of resource competition, impacts speciation rates. The impact of these different processes on the origins of evolutionary innovations throughout the Ediacaran can also be explored.