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Paleoecology, metabolism, energy intake etc for extinct non-dinosaurs (now with some progress)


ChrisSpace

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Okay, so I kinda need help with something. For a few weeks I've been compiling a list of sources for the estimated food consumptions, energy intakes and metabolic rates for various extinct animals. I actually don't have one single reason for this, but the reason most relevant to this forum is that I'm using various primordial ecosystems as base templates from which to develop the ecosystems in the Alternate Solar System Project, and using the biology of certain specific species as base templates for the more interesting inhabitants of each world. The other main reason is that I've started throwing around ideas for a story to perhaps write after my current side-projects are done.

Problem is, I've kinda hit a brick wall. You see, I've been successful getting data for the Wooly Mammoth, Megalodon, Paraceratherium and basically every dinosaur ever, but data for everything else is either just extrapolating from other animals (Mosasaurus was about the weight of an Orca so they must've eaten around the same lol), vague (Dimetrodon's metabolism was relatively high among synaposauromorphodonts), just saying what type of metabolism was used (Ichthyosaurs were thought to be endoexomesothermic) or unaccessible with my budget (You need $199.99 to view this research paper that might possibly tell you how much trilobites ate). So, as my final option I'm asking you, people of the KSP forum, if you have any data I can use for any of the following:

Haikouichthys, Astrapsis, Cephalaspis or another pre-devonian fish

Anomalocaris

Any Trilobite

Cameroceras, Tusoteuthis or another large cephalopod

Any Eurypterid (preferably Megalograptus, Pterygotus or Jakelopterus but I'm not picky)

Any Placoderm (preferably Bothriolepis or Dunkeosteus but I'm not picky)

Stethacanthus, Hyneria or another non-Placoderm Devonian predator

Hynerpeton, Proterogyrinus, Cassigyrinus, Diplocaulus or another Paleozoic amphibian

Meganeura

Arthropleura

Any Permian Synapsid (preferably Edaphosaurus, Dimetrodon, Diictodon, Inostrancevia, Purlovia or Lycaenops but I'm not picky)

Any Therocephalian

Coelurosauravus

Any Ichthyosaur (preferably Cymbospondylus, Ichthyosaurus, Shonisaurus, Shastasaurus or Opthalmosaurus but I'm not picky)

Placerias

Tanystropheus

Thrinaxodon

Any Ammonite

Any Pliosaur (preferably Liopleurodon, or Kronosaurus but I'm not picky)

Any Mosasaur (preferably Tylosaurus or Halisaurus but I'm not picky)

Sarcosuchus, Kaprosuchus or another large crocodilian

Xiphactinus

Archelon

Hesperornis, Ichthyornis or another Cretaceous bird

Beelzebufo

Carbonemys, Pristichampsus or another large Cenozoic reptile

Livyatan, Basilosaurus or a similar Cenozoic whale

Any interesting/cool/notable Cenozoic land mammal/bird (I'm not going to list them all)

Anything you think should be in this list that isn't.

Okay, that took way too long to write. So, to conclude... help with any of the above would be appreciated.

Edit: Let me clear up some stuff here

- I don't realistically plan on getting the entire list done, or even most of it in fact. And it's not a herculean task because even just one or two creatures on this list getting sufficient data will be worth it. Obviously more would be better but I'm not picky.

- I'm okay with guesstimates, conjectures etc so long as they aren't just extrapolating from other animals (unless the two are really closely related).

- I'm okay with getting more than one result for an animal for different possible lifestyles.

- I'm not including microbes because, well, they don't fossilise as often and even if they did, I doubt they'd be very different from their present-day counterparts, at least from an ecological perspective.

Edit: I think I found something that might contain useful information.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313792503_First_palaeohistological_inference_of_resting_metabolic_rate_in_an_extinct_synapsid_Moghreberia_nmachouensis_Therapsida_Anomodontia

The only problem is it's using a measurement system (mLO2 h⁻¹ g−0.67) that I don't understand. So how do I translate that into calories or kilojoules or watts?

Edit: I got another study that has the same unintelligible-unit-of-measurement problem. Again, help on converting it into something understandable would be appreciated.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301279899_Palaeohistological_Evidence_for_Ancestral_High_Metabolic_Rate_in_Archosaurs

Also, I found a study that estimates the energy costs of flying/hunting in pterosaurs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925135/

Edit: I figured out that mgO2*kg^-1*s^-1 means "milligrams of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body mass per second" and mgO2*kg^-1*h^-1 means the same thing but "per hour" instead of "per second". As for mLO2 h⁻¹ g−0.67, I'm guessing the mLO2 h⁻¹ means "millilitres per hour", but I don't know what the g-0.67 means.

Edit: We have our first completions! So I was impatient to see if anyone else could find a study estimating the basal metabolic rate of Pterosaurs (I looked everywhere but I couldn't find any), so instead I used the method at http://spec-evo.wikia.com/wiki/Speculative_Bioenergetics and used various metabolism types in my calculations. Combined with the study on Pterosaur flight, the end result is this little chart I made:

2WJCEPS.png

Now, when I was making this chart I realised that finding the study and doing the extra calculations was all stuff I did completely on my own. But you've all still been helpful in giving advice and motivation, so thanks. But more "real" help with the next ones would be preferred. To recall, my current priorities now are:

Finding out what the g^-0.67 in mLO2 h⁻¹ g^−0.67 means

Finding out what the measurements and numbers on the table of marine vertebrates are

Accessing the data in the trilobite study. I wish I could spare no expense and just purchase it but I have a budget of 0 funds right now

Edit: We have our next completions! It's not as accurate as I would've liked but it's a lot better than nothing. So, there's a study at http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/204/3/607.full.pdf that finds an equation that can be used to estimate the metabolic rate of scorpions, and by extrapolating from the largest living scorpion I've managed to get mass estimates for Pulmonoscorpius and Brontoscorpio (along with their fictional oversized counterparts). Here i've complied a table for all of them, using both the scorpion equation (1) and a generic invertebrate Basal Metabolic Rate equation (2)

NIimwNe.png

I also got Titanoboa and Argentavis done with more accuracy, but I can tell noone's interested in this anymore except me so I guess I'll stop sharing my results for this stuff.

Edited by ChrisSpace
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Ouh, this goes deeply into detailed reconstruction of long lost biocoenosis'. The list is long and from very different animal lines and a timeline. And frankly, i fear it can't be answered in detail for everything that crawls, swims or flies because variability is too high. Some of them have a high variation in their metabolism, from shut down to highly active (am thinking of some arthropods), some depend on the environment, some produce their own heat, some haven't decided yet :-) There's a long list of -therm ...

If you could say like "endotherm land living vertebrates" there might be a chance to get an estimation, probably based on a median climate.

 

So, let's see what a search reveals:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.09052 and References of course :-)

 

Searching sciencemag for "metabolism energy intake" shows 527 hits. One year to support science costs 45 funds ;-)

Nature has 5970 hits but is a little more pricey and the search spans a lot of journals that each want their contribution.

Haven't tried Elsevier because i have no access.

 

Maybe (just a proposal), if you find something interesting, judging from the abstract, you could ask and we might try ?

 

Edited by Green Baron
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Ouch. That is a Herculean task you just dropped here. Some animals you listed are known only from very fragmentary fossils\imprints - 90% of data we have on them is guesstimates and conjectures. Many of them lived in very different ecosystems (increased or decreased amount of oxygen for example) - so, again. Guesstimates abound about their rates of metabolism.

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1 minute ago, Scotius said:

Ouch. That is a Herculean task you just dropped here. Some animals you listed are known only from very fragmentary fossils\imprints - 90% of data we have on them is guesstimates and conjectures. Many of them lived in very different ecosystems (increased or decreased amount of oxygen for example) - so, again. Guesstimates abound about their rates of metabolism.

Dont' forget that most of the energy flow in most systems is in the microbes and stuff you don't pay attention to.

Soil insects, saprophytic fungi, soil bacteria (species we know, many we don't). Primitive herbivores could not capture much of the calories in their food, most of the calories were excreted as cellulose and other undigested products in the waste. In addition plants and trees that die much of the biomass is underground or compost when the plants die.

 

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There is not much organic soil pre-Devonian; needs land life. And one needs to know about the niche of an organism to give an estimate of its "lifestyle". The older, the less details there are.

If this is for a game or so, OP might end up with statistical numbers and a function for the turn around of elements in the organisms and biosphere.

Just a proposal ....

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4 hours ago, Green Baron said:

There is not much organic soil pre-Devonian; needs land life. And one needs to know about the niche of an organism to give an estimate of its "lifestyle". The older, the less details there are.

If this is for a game or so, OP might end up with statistical numbers and a function for the turn around of elements in the organisms and biosphere.

Just a proposal ....

^Pretty much this.

I doubt there is enough data in existence to semi-accurately model the ecosystems your animals lived in. Not enough organisms get preserved as fossils to reconstruct food chains. Take Dunkleosteus for example. It was a big predator - apex predator in it's environment most likely. But did it take one big prey every couple of days? Several smaller preys pretty much every day? Was it a sedentary, territorial fish, or was it a migratory, roving predator similiar to a Great White shark? We do not know, because 90% of said prey species weren't preserved (or discovered yet) - which means we do not know how much food The Dunk had available to him any given day.

Like Green Baron, i'm afraid you will have to take many assumptions, and then handwave the rest :)

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Okay, let me clear a few things up:

- I don't realistically plan on getting the entire list done, or even most of it in fact. And it's not a "Herculean task" because even just one or two creatures on this list getting sufficient data will be worth it. Obviously more would be better but I'm not picky.

- I'm okay with guesstimates, conjectures etc so long as they aren't just extrapolating from other animals (unless the two are really closely related).

- I'm okay with getting more than one result for an animal for different possible lifestyles.

- I'm not including microbes because, well, they don't fossilise as often and even if they did, I doubt they'd be very different from their present-day counterparts, at least from an ecological perspective.

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Judging by your list, you are very picky :) Most of the species in it are predators, of the large and imposing kind to boot. This is not how you build a hypothetical ecosystem. First you decide how much sunlight, water, nutrients and space you have at your disposal. And then you sow grass. For every lion, you need to have dozens of antelopes roaming over the grassland area of several square kilometers. And they will need access to a sufficient source of water, or else they'll starve or migrate out of the area - in both cases starving the lions.

So, in my opinion you have two choices:

Populate your hypothetical planet with big, impressive predators, then throw in a bunch of herbivores and call it a day.

Really dig in into the field of environmental ecology. Learn step-by-step how ecosystems work. Write a doctorate :)

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Weather update: I think I found something that might contain useful information.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313792503_First_palaeohistological_inference_of_resting_metabolic_rate_in_an_extinct_synapsid_Moghreberia_nmachouensis_Therapsida_Anomodontia

The only problem is it's using a measurement system (mLO2 h⁻¹ g−0.67) that I don't understand. So how do I translate that into calories or kilojoules or watts?

1 hour ago, Scotius said:

Populate your hypothetical planet with big, impressive predators, then throw in a bunch of herbivores and call it a day.

With a few exceptions, that's the plan. For the Alternate Solar System ecosystems it's a bit more complcated but still roughly the same idea.

1 hour ago, James Kerman said:

Where's the data I'm looking for?

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36 minutes ago, ChrisSpace said:

Where's the data I'm looking for?

I'm sorry, Mate, your post got me interested in what it seems like a good list of creatures to read up about and I posted some links with general information.  I now realize it was off topic and not helpful to you so I apologize.

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15 hours ago, ChrisSpace said:

Okay, let me clear a few things up:

- I don't realistically plan on getting the entire list done, or even most of it in fact. And it's not a "Herculean task" because even just one or two creatures on this list getting sufficient data will be worth it. Obviously more would be better but I'm not picky.

- I'm okay with guesstimates, conjectures etc so long as they aren't just extrapolating from other animals (unless the two are really closely related).

- I'm okay with getting more than one result for an animal for different possible lifestyles.

- I'm not including microbes because, well, they don't fossilise as often and even if they did, I doubt they'd be very different from their present-day counterparts, at least from an ecological perspective.

But you could set up generic parameters and variances.

For example a herbivore of metabolism X1 with digestive efficiency Y1 puts Z1 load on ecosystem requiring P amount of plant biomass and Q amount of microbial biomass.
Then all of plant Ps require W amount of water and S amount of sunlight.

Example predator of metabolism X2  . . . . . . . .requires X1 amount of herbivores . . .

Example saprophitic omnivore X2  . . . . .requires. . . . . . .

The there are trait modifyers, for example trait M1 increases the efficiecny of digestion, M2 increases surface conservation of heat in cold weather (therefore slowing metabolism). You could have a trait say M3, that allows an organism to grow symbiotic algae in its skin (allowing a reduction of Z1). . . . . .

You get the point. In this way you can say look at comparables. What is the metabolism of  . . .non-free swimming chordates. . .free swimming fish. . .sharks and rays . . . salamanders, frogs,  . . .then reptiles . . . .

Then refine based on these.

 

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20 hours ago, Green Baron said:

There is not much organic soil pre-Devonian; needs land life. And one needs to know about the niche of an organism to give an estimate of its "lifestyle". The older, the less details there are.

If this is for a game or so, OP might end up with statistical numbers and a function for the turn around of elements in the organisms and biosphere.

Just a proposal ....

Not sure when the discussion devolved into pre-Devonian, since he was talking about comparators with modern land mammals and none dinosaurs, most of the later period. Compost will begin to accumulate any time you have leaf litter to any degree. Even so the ocean sediment is loaded with bacteria, which goes even deeper than traditional soils.

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Weather update: I got another study that has the same unintelligible-unit-of-measurement problem. Again, help on converting it into something understandable would be appreciated.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301279899_Palaeohistological_Evidence_for_Ancestral_High_Metabolic_Rate_in_Archosaurs

Also, I found a study that estimates the energy costs of flying/hunting in pterosaurs.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1925135/

Now I just need their basal metabolic rate, which is harder than it sounds because the type of metabolism they used differs depending on which source you use. So, yeah, help with that would be appreciated.

13 hours ago, James Kerman said:

I'm sorry, Mate, your post got me interested in what it seems like a good list of creatures to read up about and I posted some links with general information.  I now realize it was off topic and not helpful to you so I apologize.

The fact you at least tried to help is still very much appreciated.

11 hours ago, PB666 said:

But you could set up generic parameters and variances.

For example a herbivore of metabolism X1 with digestive efficiency Y1 puts Z1 load on ecosystem requiring P amount of plant biomass and Q amount of microbial biomass.
Then all of plant Ps require W amount of water and S amount of sunlight.

Example predator of metabolism X2  . . . . . . . .requires X1 amount of herbivores . . .

Example saprophitic omnivore X2  . . . . .requires. . . . . . .

The there are trait modifyers, for example trait M1 increases the efficiecny of digestion, M2 increases surface conservation of heat in cold weather (therefore slowing metabolism). You could have a trait say M3, that allows an organism to grow symbiotic algae in its skin (allowing a reduction of Z1). . . . . .

You get the point. In this way you can say look at comparables. What is the metabolism of  . . .non-free swimming chordates. . .free swimming fish. . .sharks and rays . . . salamanders, frogs,  . . .then reptiles . . . .

Then refine based on these.

Right now I prefer my method, but I'll try that later.

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Weather update: Now here's a table that has way more than I could've hoped for. Like, nearly every sea vertabrate on my list is here.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185185.g006

But I can't figure out what unit of measurement they're using on their axes. Help with this one would be extremely appreciated.

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Weather update: I figured out that mgO2*kg^-1*s^-1 means "milligrams of oxygen consumed per kilogram of body mass per second" and mgO2*kg^-1*h^-1 means the same thing but "per hour" instead of "per second". As for mLO2 h⁻¹ g−0.67, I'm guessing the mLO2 h⁻¹ means "millilitres per hour", but I don't know what the g-0.67 means.

Edited by ChrisSpace
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Weather update: we have our first completions! So I was impatient to see if anyone else could find a study estimating the basal metabolic rate of Pterosaurs (I looked everywhere but I couldn't find any), so instead I used the method at http://spec-evo.wikia.com/wiki/Speculative_Bioenergetics and used various metabolism types in my calculations. Combined with the study on Pterosaur flight, the end result is this little chart I made:

2WJCEPS.png

Now, when I was making this chart I realised that finding the study and doing the extra calculations was all stuff I did completely on my own. But you've all still been helpful in giving advice and motivation, so thanks. But more "real" help with the next ones would be preferred. To recall, my current priorities now are:

Finding out what the g^-0.67 in mLO2 h⁻¹ g^−0.67 means

Accessing the data at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/paleobiology/article/body-size-scaling-of-metabolic-rate-in-the-trilobite-eldredgeops-rana/57D2D2FB5701C7C14F90A46BC62F5567 I wish I could spare no expense and just purchase it but I have a budget of 0 funds right now

Edited by ChrisSpace
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  • 2 weeks later...

Weather update: We have our next completions! It's not as accurate as I would've liked but it's a lot better than nothing. So, there's a study at http://jeb.biologists.org/content/jexbio/204/3/607.full.pdf that finds an equation that can be used to estimate the metabolic rate of scorpions, and by extrapolating from the largest living scorpion I've managed to get mass estimates for Pulmonoscorpius and Brontoscorpio (along with their fictional oversized counterparts). Here i've complied a table for all of them, using both the scorpion equation (1) and a generic invertebrate Basal Metabolic Rate equation (2)

NIimwNe.png

I also got Titanoboa and Argentavis done with more accuracy, but I can tell noone's interested in this anymore except me so I guess I'll stop sharing my results for this stuff.

Edited by ChrisSpace
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On 3/17/2018 at 3:46 AM, ChrisSpace said:

(mLO2 h⁻¹ g−0.67

Mind you I know nothing about the subject, but I was interested to see how this all fits together. Could it be related to cell size?

https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/603610 That's the only thing I can find that shows a 2/3 exponent.

That was the result of weeding through about 40 browser tabs.

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Did you remember to factor in changes in atmospheric content, temperature and other environmental variables? In Carbonaceous oxygen level in atmosphere were at all times high - i have no doubts it would skew metabolism rates towards "much more active". On the other hand, in Permian-Triassic period there was much less oxygen in atmosphere than normal. Which means that by necessity animals were more sluggish and needed to relocate more energy towards breathing.

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