Gastropod Drilling Predation in the Upper Jurassic of Kutch, India

Abstract

Gastropod drillholes on prey shells provide an opportunity to test the importance of predation in an evolutionary context. Although records of drilling predation are widespread across the Phanerozoic, the temporal distribution and relative importance of this mode of predation is still controversial. Further, some studies indicate a decline of drilling predation in the Mesozoic but other studies do not. In this study, we present a new dataset of gastropod drilling predation on Kimmeridgian and Tithonian bivalves of Kutch, India. Our study suggests that drilling was one of the prevailing modes of predation in the Upper Jurassic of Kutch with strongly variable intensities, ranging from 2% in the Kimmeridgian Seebachia to 26% in the Tithonian Pinna. A significant, albeit small, increase in drilling intensity from the Kimmeridgian to the Tithonian assemblages is associated with a change in relative sea-level and depositional environment. The morphology of drillholes and recent discovery of body fossils from the same stratigraphic units suggest naticid gastropods as the most likely drillers. A literature survey, along with previously collected specimen from the Jurassic of Kutch, reveals a more complex history of drilling predation than previously assumed.

Drilling predation on Early Jurassic bivalves and behavioral patterns of the presumed gastropod predator—evidence from Pliensbachian soft-bottom deposits of northern Germany

“…In the Lower Jurassic, the drill-hole record is patchily present in the Hettangian, Sinemurian, and Pliensbachian until it was interrupted at the Pliensbachian–Toarcian extinction event. The drilling record reappeared in the Bajocian–Bathonian (Kowalewski et al 1998 with supplementary material; Harper et al 1998) and increased from the Late Jurassic onward (Tackett and Tintori 2019; Saha et al 2021). Similar to the drilling interactions (both parasitic and predatory ones; Huntley and Kowalewski 2007), parasitic interactions also decreased in the late Paleozoic and early Mesozoic (De Baets et al 2021).…”

“…Although there is a substantial amount of drill-hole record from the Cretaceous onward (Huntley and Kowalewski 2007; Rojas et al 2017), the record is quite scarce in the Triassic (i.e., Fürsich and Jablonski 1984; Newton et al 1987; McRoberts and Blodgett 2000; Klompmaker et al 2016; Tackett and Tintori 2019) and in the Jurassic (i.e., Sohl 1969; Bromley 1981; Harper et al 1998; Kowalewski et al 1998; Harper and Wharton 2000; Aberhan et al 2011; Bardhan et al 2012; Karapunar et al 2020a,b; Saha et al 2021; see also Fürsich et al 2023). Different hypotheses have been proposed to explain the rarity of drill holes in the Mesozoic fossil record: low diversity of drilling organisms (Kowalewski et al 1998; Huntley and Kowalewski 2007), low sampling intensity and poor preservation (Huntley and Kowalewski 2007), and taphonomic bias (Harper et al 1998).…”

Enhancing Sustainability in Road Infrastructure: A Comprehensive GIS Approach to Vulnerability Mapping in the Marand-Bazargan Freeway, Iran

“…The AHP integration with GIS is an effective spatial analysis tool that allows for the creation of a complete geographical database that can be utilised by multicriteria approaches and allows the user to assess different alternatives based on numerous and competing objectives [19]. The weight of criteria in empirical methods like AHP should be determined based on expert opinions.…”