Jonathan A Todd

Natural History Museum, London · Department of Earth Sciences

The Polystira clade (here comprising Polystira and Pleuroliria) is a poorly known but hyper-diverse clade within the neogastropod family Turridae (sensu stricto). It has extensively radiated within the tropics and subtropics of the Americas, to which it is endemic. In this paper we present a synthetic overview of existing information on this radiat...

The formation of the Isthmus of Panama stands as one of the greatest natural events of the Cenozoic, driving profound biotic transformations on land and in the oceans. Some recent studies suggest that the Isthmus formed many millions of years earlier than the widely recognized age of approximately 3 million years ago (Ma), a result that if true wou...

The lake bottom along structural platforms in Lake Tanganyika, Africa, is carpeted with numerous large shell beds, known to be of late Holocene age, but of uncertain assemblage process. The shell beds may be the result of sedimentological (physical) assembly processes, or biological processes, or both. Previous work focused on the distribution of s...

Significance Pteropods are abundant aragonitic calcifiers, contributing up to 89% of total pelagic calcification. Because of their delicate shells, they are considered “canaries in the coalmine” to indicate impacts of ocean acidification. Their sensitivity to high CO 2 levels and limited fossil record has led to the widely held view that pteropods...

Parasites are ubiquitous in modern ecosystems, occupy one of the most successful life modes, promote ecosystem stability, and, despite their typically diminutive size and lack of a mineralized skeleton, are commonly identified in the fossil record. Bivalve mollusks have occupied marine aquatic environments since the Cambrian, comprise an excellent...

Accurate reconstruction of seasonal atmospheric patterns of the past is essential for reliable prediction of how climate will evolve due to anthropogenic CO2 forcing. The Eocene ‘hot house’ climate, as the warmest epoch during the Cenozoic, is considered as a potential analogue for ‘high-CO2’ future climate scenarios. In this context, the reconstru...

Natural history museums house numerous previously undescribed species and unknown information hidden in their collections. We describe lower Carboniferous slit-bearing gastropods (order Pleurotomariida, subclass Vetigastropoda; and family Goniasmatidae, subclass Caenogastropoda) from previously unreported gastropod collections made by Jane Longstaf...

We often wish to classify objects by their shapes. Indeed, the study of shapes is an important part of many scientific fields, such as evolutionary biology, structural biology, image processing and archaeology. However, mathematical shape spaces are rather complicated and nonlinear. The most widely used methods of shape analysis, geometric morphome...

Shifts in the hydrological cycle, such as the location and magnitude of seasonal precipitation, are changing as a result of current climate change. The Eocene, as the warmest epoch during the Cenozoic, is increasingly used as a test of our understanding of how broad-scale features of the climate system respond to greenhouse gas forcing. Here we dem...

Parasites are widespread in modern ecosystems, occupy one of the most (if not the most) successful life modes, promote ecosystem stability, and, despite their typically small size and lack of a mineralized skeleton, are often identified in the fossil record. Bivalve molluscs have occupied marine aquatic environments since the Cambrian, comprise an...

Collision between Australia and SE Asia began in Sulawesi, the world’s eleventh‐largest island, in the Early Miocene and subsequently Neogene sediments were deposited largely in coastal to shelf environments throughout the island. These sediments have been assigned to the Celebes Molasse, previously considered as a single post‐orogenic unit deposit...

The Eocene, as the warmest epoch during the Cenozoic, has received much attention as it can inform us about the features of global warmth, highly relevant to a "high-CO2" future. However, there is still a lack of knowledge regarding some key features of global warm climates, such as how higher global temperatures might have affected the duration an...

A growing body of palaeoecological studies delineate long-term trends in the energetic structure of marine ecosystems, based primarily on the taxonomic and trophic composition and size-frequency distributions of local fossil assemblages. Changes in primary productivity are often invoked as drivers of these trends but the relationship between produc...

The Eocene ´greenhouse´ climate represents the warmest period within the Cenozoic and has therefore become especially interesting as an analogue for estimated future climate scenarios. For paleo-climate reconstructions, bivalves represent valuable proxy archives with a high temporal resolution, due to their distinct, periodic layering (growth incre...

We often wish to classify objects by their shapes. Indeed, the study of shapes is an important part of many scientific fields such as evolutionary biology, structural biology, image processing, and archaeology. The most widely-used method of shape analysis, Geometric Morphometrics, assumes that that the mathematical space in which shapes are repres...

The paper is available free at http://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app66/app007922020.pdf. A new gastropod genus and its type species, namely Ederazyga fanchini gen. et sp. nov., are described from the upper Rhaetian deposits of Lombardy (northern Italy) and tentatively placed into the family Zygopleuridae. The first appearance of Ederazyga is...

Taxonomic identification of fossils is fundamental to a wide range of geological and biological disciplines. Many fossil groups are identified based on expert judgement, which requires extensive experience and is not always available for the specific taxonomic group at hand. Nerineoideans, a group of extinct gastropods that formed a major component...

The Neogene and Quaternary are characterized by enormous changes in global climate and environments, including global cooling and the establishment of northern high-latitude glaciers. These changes reshaped global ecosystems, including the emergence of tropical dry forests and savannahs that are found in Africa today, which in turn may have influen...

Pteropods are a group of planktonic gastropods that are widely regarded as biological indicators for assessing the impacts of ocean acidification (OA). Their thin aragonitic shells are highly sensitive to acute changes in ocean chemistry. However, to gain insight into their potential to adapt to current climate change, we need to accurately reconst...

Accurate identification of fossils forms the foundation for many aspects of geological research, including biostratigraphy and paleoecology. Yet, many taxa are identified qualitatively based on their morphology, which requires extensive expertise in specific taxonomic groups. The often-subjective identification of specimens is difficult to verify a...

Invertebrates are exceptionally diverse, but declining because of anthropogenic changes to their habitat, as exemplified by freshwater bivalves in Europe and North America. Much less information is available for African freshwater bivalves, especially for Unionidae, which comprise 9 genera and ~40 nominal species, many of which are endemic to Afric...

Taxonomy is a scientific discipline that has provided the universal naming and classification system of biodiversity for centuries and continues effectively to accommodate new knowledge. A recent publication by Garnett and Christidis [1] expressed concerns regarding the difficulty that taxonomic changes represent for conservation efforts and propos...

Significance Reconstructing the degree of warming during geological periods of elevated CO 2 provides a way of testing our understanding of the Earth system and the accuracy of climate models. We present accurate estimates of tropical sea-surface temperatures (SST) and seawater chemistry during the Eocene (56–34 Ma before present, CO 2 >560 ppm). T...

Pteropods are a widespread group of holoplanktonic gastropod molluscs and are uniquely suitable for study of long-term evolutionary processes in the open ocean because they are the only living metazoan plankton with a good fossil record. Pteropods have been proposed as bioindicators to monitor the impacts of ocean acidification and in consequence h...

Pteropods are a widespread group of holoplanktonic gastropod molluscs and are uniquely suitable for study of long-term evolutionary processes in the open ocean because they are the only living metazoan plankton with a good fossil record. Pteropods have been proposed as bioindicators to monitor the impacts of ocean acidification and in consequence h...

Maximum Likelihood phylogeny of pteropods based on 18S sequences (N = 52 sequences of 1683 basepairs). Black squares represent a bootstrap support of ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus level, respectively. Abbreviations ATL, PAC, and IND denote Atlantic, Pacific, and India...

Maximum Likelihood phylogeny of pteropods based on Cytochrome Oxidase I sequences (N = 117 sequences of 656 basepairs). Black squares represent a bootstrap support of ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus level, respectively. Abbreviations ATL, PAC, and IND denote Atlantic, P...

Combined Maximum Likelihood phylogeny using the same dataset as for the molecular clock analyses (46 sequences, max. one sequence per taxon per ocean). Black squares represent bootstrap support ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus level, respectively. Abbreviations ATL, PAC,...

Pteropod phylogeny based on a fossil-calibrated molecular clock approach (46 sequences, max. one sequence per taxon per ocean) following Method 2 with stem calibrations based on the oldest known fossils of Hyalocylis, Diacria, Cavolinia, Cuvierinia, Creseis, and euthecosomes (see Table 1). Calibrations are indicated with stars. Error bars (95%) are...

Overview of sequences used in combined and/or as single-gene phylogenetic analyses based on Cytochrome Oxidase I, 28S rRNA, and 18S rRNA. Numbers in the 9th column indicate their use in (1) single-gene Maximum Likelihood (ML), combined ML and combined Bayesian phylogenies, (2) single-gene ML and combined ML phylogenies, or (3) single-gene ML phylog...

Maximum Likelihood phylogeny of pteropods based on 28S sequences (N = 87 sequences of 941 basepairs). Black squares represent a bootstrap support of ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus level, respectively. Abbreviations ATL, PAC, and IND denote Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian...

Combined Maximum Likelihood tree based on Cytochrome Oxidase I protein sequences and 28S and 18S DNA sequences including long-branch taxa (78 sequences, max. two sequences per taxon per ocean). Black squares represent bootstrap support ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus le...

Maximum Likelihood phylogeny of pteropods based on Cytochrome Oxidase I protein sequences (N = 117 sequences of 218 amino acids). Black squares represent a bootstrap support of ≥80%, with small, medium and large black squares representing support within genera, of genera, and above genus level, respectively. Abbreviations ATL, PAC, and IND denote A...

Time-calibrated molecular phylogeny of pteropods (46 sequences, max. one sequence per taxon per ocean) following Method 3 with crown calibrations of Clio pyramidata, Hyalocylis striata, and Cliopsis krohni based on the formation of the Isthmus of Panama (IOP) and the oldest known euthecosome fossil (see Table 1). Calibrations are indicated with sta...

The Panama Paleontology Project (PPP) broke new ground in the rigorous quantitative analysis of evolutionary and ecological change over geological time in a highly biodiverse tropical setting. Many advances were made but most studies within the PPP have focused on a single taxonomic group or a distinct metric of environmental or ecological change....

In 1858 Carpenter described the fossil "Caecum trachea" sensu Wood (1842, 1848) from the Pliocene British Crag Mollusca as new to science and named it Caecum tumidum. A lectotype is selected to stabilize the species. C. tumidum appears to be also present in the Pliocene of Belgium and The Netherlands. As C. tumidum until recently has been mistaken...

A brief identification guide to Melanoides snail lineages ('species') of Lake Malawi and the surrounding region. (A field guide, 2008).

This study is a preliminary assessment of an extremely diverse Tortonian (late Miocene) mollusk assemblage from a coral carpet environment preserved at Bontang (East Kalimantan, Indonesia). Even though coral-associated aragonitic faunas are rarely well preserved, the composition of the assemblage described here can be used to address the following...

The present-day global maximum for marine biodiversity has been located in Southeast Asia since at least the earliest Miocene. The history of biota in the region has been inferred from the present-day biogeography and phylogeny of extant organisms, but these analyses do not provide adequate tests of the various hypotheses proposed for the origins o...

Two late Miocene Tridacna (giant clam) shells from East Kalimantan (Indonesia) were investigated in order to evaluate their potential as subannually resolved paleoenvironmental archives. Via a combination of X-ray diffraction (XRD), laser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry (LA-ICPMS) trace element analysis, scanning electron micr...

Seagrass meadows are marine habitats with high ecological importance. Their detection in the fossil record will contribute to our understanding of the development of patterns of marine biodiversity through time and the response of coastal marine habitats to environmental change. Due to the low probability of fossilization of seagrass macrofossils,...

Lake Tanganyika, East Africa, is renowned for its high species diversity and numerous endemic radiations. One of these, a ‘superflock’ of benthic gastropods is the most diverse (>100 spp.) and disparate (18 genera) extant radiation of its kind[1]. Despite this it remains poorly systematised. One component, the iconic genus Paramelania, has been kno...

Caribbean coastal ecosystems have undergone severe degradation both historically and recently, primarily caused by the synergistic effects of overfishing, eutrophication, sedimentation, disease, and other factors associated with humans. Baseline conditions from pristine Caribbean reefs and seagrass beds are required to understand and quantify degra...

The specialized carnivorous conoidean Polystira comprises the largest marine snail species radiation in the Neotropics with approximately 120 living species known and a rich Neogene fossil record. Here we analyze its patterns of species richness, origination, and extinction over the past 12 million years (My) in the southwestern Caribbean (SWC). Ta...

Organised mineralised structures observed in large inoceramids (valves on a metre scale) from the Late Albian, Toolebuc Formation, Australia (Inoceramus suther-landi McCoy, 1865), and the Santonian, Niobrara Formation, USA (Platyceramus sp.), were investigated using variable pressure scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy-dispersive X-ray s...

A set of terms recommended for use in facilitating communication in biological nomenclature is presented as a table showing broadly equivalent terms used in the traditional Codes of nomenclature. These terms are intended to help those engaged in naming across organism groups, and are the result of the work of the International Committee on Bionomen...

Actualistic studies of modern continental environments and the spatial and temporal distribution of terrestrial and aquatic organisms are summarized and synthesized to understand how to better interpret the significance of trace fossils to differentiate lacustrine from fluvial, eolian, and marine deposits in the geologic record. The purpose of this...

In the otherwise excellent special issueof Trends in Ecology and Evolution on long-term ecological research (TREE 25(10), 2010), none of the contributors mentioned the importance of natural history collections (NHCs) as sources of data that can strongly complement past and ongoing survey data.Whereas very few field surveys have operated for more th...

The superfamily Conoidea constitutes one of the most diverse and taxonomically challenging groups among marine molluscs. Classifications based on shell or radular characters are highly contradictory and disputed. Whereas the monophyly of the Conidae and Terebridae has not been challenged, the other constituents of the superfamily are placed in a 't...