A NEW APPROACH TO EVOLUTIONARY PALEOECOLOGY RESEARCH: BUILDING SUBSTANTIAL DATASETS THROUGH THE INVOLVEMENT OF PRECOLLEGE STUDENTS

Fundamental questions about the response of organisms to environmental change at different spatial and temporal scales have remained unanswered due, in part, to the significant labor involved in building datasets capable of documenting high-resolution patterns over larger geographic areas and longer time intervals. The involvement of non-specialists in data collection can produce substantial datasets, which, if sufficiently accurate, may allow certain scale-related questions in evolutionary paleoecology to be answered. The Devonian Seas Earth Research Partnership was designed to evaluate the scientific potential of engaging precollege students in paleoecology research. Participating students gather data on the distribution and abundance of select benthic marine invertebrates commonly found in the northern Appalachian Basin during Hamilton Group deposition. Presence-absence and rank order comparisons between raw student data and reference data are variable: students generally overestimate species richness, and certain taxa are subject to misidentification. The following corrections dramatically improve the correlation between datasets: a) averaging replicate counts for the same bulk sample generated by different classes; b) averaging counts for consecutive stratigraphic samples from within the same stratigraphic unit; c) removing single occurrence taxa and/or taxa making up less than 5% of the overall assemblage; d) grouping counts for select taxa that students have difficulty differentiating. Detrended Correspondence Analysis (DCA) is used to ordinate faunal abundance data along underlying ecological gradients. Preliminary DCA results show comparable trends along Axis 1 between student and reference data. These findings suggest that student abundance data for common taxa can be used to document gradients in the fossil record. As our dataset grows, the potential exists to test for the recurrence of ecological gradients in consecutive stratigraphic sequences through the Middle Devonian at a larger scale than would be feasible for an individual researcher. Despite error, precollege student involvement in paleoecology research may generate substantial useful datasets, allowing researchers to ask questions that may not otherwise be possible.