加拿大萨斯喀彻温大学Luis A. Buatois团队研究了深海底部的早期集群——生态系统的长期建立。该项研究成果发表在2025年2月10日出版的《美国科学院院刊》上。

人们对深海生态系统进化背后的模式和过程的理解是有限的，因为深海的实体化石记录很差。然而，这一知识空白可能会被填补，因为沉积物中有各种丰富的痕迹化石，记录了底栖深海生物的活动。

通过对720个埃迪卡拉纪-泥盆纪单元的全面调查，研究组建立了一个全球痕迹化石发生数据集，并表明现代深海底栖生态系统的建立是长期的，与奥陶纪期间全球冷却和氧合增加相一致。开放洞穴的形成可能增加了最上层沉积区的生物灌溉，促进了通风，并在生物扰动和孔隙水氧合之间形成了生态系统工程反馈回路。泥盆纪深海生物扰动的急剧变化可能源于气候控制的海洋环流引起的氧气变化。

附：英文原文

Title: Early colonization of the deep-sea bottom—The protracted build-up of an ecosystem

Author: Buatois, Luis A., Mángano, M. Gabriela, Paz, Maximiliano, Minter, Nicholas J., Zhou, Kai

Issue&Volume: 2025-2-10

Abstract: Our understanding of the patterns and processes behind the evolution of deep-marine ecosystems is limited because the body-fossil record of the deep sea is poor. However, that gap in knowledge may be filled as deposits are host to diverse and abundant trace fossils that record the activities of benthic deep-marine organisms. Here, we built a global dataset of trace-fossil occurrences from a comprehensive survey of 720 Ediacaran–Devonian units and show that the establishment of a modern-style deep-marine benthic ecosystem was protracted and coincident with global cooling and increase in oxygenation during the Ordovician. The formation of open burrows may have increased bioirrigation in the uppermost sediment zone, promoting ventilation and generating an ecosystem engineering feedback loop between bioturbation and pore-water oxygenation. Sharp changes in deep-marine bioturbation during the Devonian may have originated from oxygen variations resulting from climate-controlled oceanic circulation.

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2414752122

Source: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2414752122