Climate-mediated changes in predator–prey interactions in the fossil record: a case study using shell-drilling gastropods from the Pleistocene Japan Sea

Abstract

Paleoecological studies enhance our understanding of biotic responses to climate change because they consider long timescales not accessible through observational and experimental studies. Using predatory drillholes produced on fossil bivalve shells by carnivorous gastropods, we provide an example of how climate change affected predator–prey interactions. We quantitatively examine temporal changes in fossil molluscan assemblages and predation patterns from the Pleistocene Japan Sea, which experienced drastic environmental changes in relation to glacial–interglacial climate cycles. We found significant changes in predation patterns associated with a decline in the abundance of warm-water molluscan species. Climate-mediated fluctuations in the eustatic sea level and resultant weakening of the Tsushima Warm Current caused a decline in a warm-water shell-drilling predator, which moderated the predation pressure and size relationship between the predators and the bivalve prey. Our results indicate that climate-mediated range shifts of species in present-day and future marine ecosystems can likewise increase altered predator–prey interactions.

Common mollusk genera indicate interactions with their predators were ecologically stable across the Plio-Pleistocene extinction

“…Individual naticids show a very limited ability to learn or be ingestively conditioned, suggesting that much of the behavioral program is hard-wired (Kelley and Hansen, 2003;Chiba and Sato, 2012;Hutchings and Herbert, 2013). The lack of behavioral flexibility, which contrasts with the behavioral polymorphism of muricids (Walker, 2007), argues against edge-drilling as a phenotypically plastic adaptation in naticids; Chiba and Sato (2016) reached a similar conclusion when analyzing the record of naticid predation on Pleistocene Glycymeris from northern Japan. Instead, drill-hole siting is an attribute of interactions between specific species of predators and prey; prey shell shape and sculpture tend to affect the stereotyped siting of naticid drill holes on shells (Ansell and Morton, 1985;Hasegawa and Sato, 2009;Chattopadhyay et al, 2014;Klompmaker and Kelley, 2015).…”

“…Pacific biotas were also not subject to the same magnitude of extinction as in the Western Atlantic Jackson et al, 1993). Insight would be gained from studying the response of predation proxies as species responded individualistically to changes in climate (Chiba and Sato, 2016).…”

Predation in the marine fossil record: Studies, data, recognition, environmental factors, and behavior

“…Despite the rich molluscan fossil record and dramatic changes in Cenozoic temperature, little is known about the effect of temperature on predator-prey interactions in deep time. An exception is a study on Pleistocene mollusk assemblages from Japan (Chiba and Sato, 2016).…”

Ocean acidification and molluscan shell taphonomy: Can elevated seawater pCO2 influence taphonomy in a naticid predator–prey system?

“…Nonetheless, future studies repeating our experiments should be sure to also assess dissolution rates of various shells under more modest pCO 2 conditions compared to our high (4000 µatm) treatment. Ultimately, inferences of predator-prey ecology of drilling gastropod systems (Chiba and Sato, 2016) could potentially reflect post-mortem…”