↓ Skip to main content

Anamorphic development and extended parental care in a 520 million-year-old stem-group euarthropod from China

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, September 2018
Altmetric Badge

About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (99th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
1 news outlet
blogs
1 blog
twitter
113 X users
wikipedia
5 Wikipedia pages

Citations

dimensions_citation
19 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
31 Mendeley
You are seeing a free-to-access but limited selection of the activity Altmetric has collected about this research output. Click here to find out more.
Title
Anamorphic development and extended parental care in a 520 million-year-old stem-group euarthropod from China
Published in
BMC Ecology and Evolution, September 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12862-018-1262-6
Pubmed ID
Authors

Dongjing Fu, Javier Ortega-Hernández, Allison C Daley, Xingliang Zhang, Degan Shu

Abstract

Extended parental care is a complex reproductive strategy in which progenitors actively look after their offspring up to - or beyond - the first juvenile stage in order to maximize their fitness. Although the euarthropod fossil record has produced several examples of brood-care, the appearance of extended parental care within this phylum remains poorly constrained given the scarcity of developmental data for Palaeozoic stem-group representatives that would link juvenile and adult forms in an ontogenetic sequence. Here, we describe the post-embryonic growth of Fuxianhuia protensa from the early Cambrian Chengjiang Lagerstätte in South China. Our data demonstrate anamorphic post-embryonic development for F. protensa, in which new tergites were sequentially added from a posterior growth zone, the number of tergites varies from eight to 30. The growth of F. protensa is typified by the alternation between segment addition, followed by the depletion of the anteriormost abdominal segment into the thoracic region. The transformation of abdominal into thoracic tergite is demarcated by the development of laterally tergopleurae, and biramous walking legs. The new ontogeny data leads to the recognition of the rare Chengjiang euarthropod Pisinnocaris subconigera as a junior synonym of Fuxianhuia. Comparisons between different species of Fuxianhuia and with other genera within Fuxianhuiida suggest that heterochrony played a prominent role in the morphological diversification of fuxianhuiids. Functional analogy with the flexible trunk ontogeny of Cambrian and Silurian olenimorphic trilobites suggests an adaptation to sporadic low oxygen conditions in Chengjiang deposits for F. protensa. Finally, understanding the growth of F. protensa allows for the interpretation of an exceptional life assemblage consisting of a sexually mature adult alongside four ontogenetically coeval juveniles, which constitutes the oldest occurrence of extended parental care by prolonged cohabitation in the panarthropod fossil record. Our findings constitute the most detailed characterization of the post-embryonic development in a soft-bodied upper stem-group euarthropod available to date. The new ontogeny data illuminates the systematics, trunk segmentation and palaeoecology of F. protensa, offers insights on the macroevolutionary processes involved in the diversification of this clade, and contributes towards an improved understanding of complex post-embryonic reproductive ecology in Cambrian euarthropods.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 113 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 31 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 31 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 6 19%
Student > Bachelor 3 10%
Researcher 3 10%
Other 2 6%
Professor 2 6%
Other 3 10%
Unknown 12 39%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Earth and Planetary Sciences 8 26%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 6 19%
Environmental Science 4 13%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 2 6%
Unknown 11 35%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 88. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 25 August 2022.
All research outputs
#489,079
of 25,523,622 outputs
Outputs from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#102
of 3,717 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#10,550
of 353,072 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#1
of 57 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,523,622 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,717 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 353,072 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 57 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.