Biology subjects

Gueriau, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Gueriau, P..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2021

The oldest peracarid crustacean reveals a Late Devonian freshwater colonisation by isopod relatives

Peracarida (e.g., woodlice & side-swimmers) are, together with their sister-group Eucarida (e.g. krill & decapods), the most speciose group of modern crustaceans, suggested to have appeared as early as the Ordovician. While eucarids incursion onto land consists of mainly freshwater and littoral grounds, some peracarids have evolved fully terrestrial ground-crawling ecologies, inhabiting even our gardens in temperate regions (e.g. pillbugs and sowbugs). Their fossil record extends back to the Carboniferous and consists mainly of marine occurrences. Here, we provide a complete re-analysis of a fossil arthropod - Oxyuropoda - reported in 1908 from the Late Devonian floodplains of Ireland, and left with unresolved systematic affinities despite a century of attempts at identification. Known from a single specimen preserved in two-dimensions, we analysed its anatomy using digital microscopy and multispectral macro-imaging to enhance contrast of morphological structures. The new anatomical characters and completeness of Oxyuropoda, together with a phylogenetic analysis with representatives of all major Eumalacostraca groups, indicate that Oxyuropoda is a crown-peracarid, part of a clade including amphipods and isopods. As such, Oxyuropoda is the oldest known Peracarida, and provides evidence that derived peracarids had an incursion into freshwater and terrestrial environments as early as the Famennian, more than 360 million years ago.

paleontology↗

bioRxiv2020

Pushing Raman spectroscopy over the edge: purported signatures of organic molecules in fossils are instrumental artefacts

Claims for the widespread preservation of fossilized biomolecules in many fossil animals have recently been reported in six studies, based on Raman microspectroscopy. Here, we show that the putative Raman signatures of organic compounds in these fossils are actually instrumental artefacts resulting from intense background luminescence. Raman spectroscopy relies upon the detection of photons scattered inelastically by matter as a result of its interaction with a laser beam. For many natural materials, this interaction also generates a luminescence signal that is often orders of magnitude more intense than the light produced by Raman scattering. Such luminescence, coupled with the transmission properties of the spectrometer, induced quasi-periodic ripples in the measured spectra that have been incorrectly interpreted as Raman signatures of organic molecules. Although several analytical strategies have been developed to overcome this common issue, Raman microspectroscopy as used in the studies questioned here cannot be used to identify fossil biomolecules.

paleontology↗

bioRxiv2020

Exceptional Late Devonian arthropods document the origin of decapod crustaceans

With over 15,000 extant species, Decapoda--or ten-legged crustaceans such as crabs, shrimp, lobsters, and relatives-- are among the most speciose and economically important group of crustaceans. Despite of their diversity, anatomical disparity, and remarkable fossil record extending back to the Late Paleozoic, the origins of Decapoda and their phylogenetic relationships with eumalacostracans remains elusive and inconclusive. Molecular dating suggests that decapods originated in the Late Ordovician (~450 Mya), but no reliable fossil crown groups are found until the Late Devonian. Moreover, there is no consensus on which lineages belong to stem groups, obscuring our understanding of the roots of the ten-legged decapod body plans as a whole, and how they relate to other non-decapod crustaceans. We present new, exceptional fossils from the Late Devonian of Czech Republic and Poland that belong to {dagger}Angustidontida, an odd shrimp-looking crustacean with a combination of anatomical features unlike those of any crown eumalacostracan known--extinct or extant. Our phylogenetic analyses, including representatives of all major lineages of crown eumalacostracans plus {dagger}Angustidontida, identify angustidontids as the only known stem-group decapod, and give hints about the transformation series, polarity of change, and evolutionary pathways leading to the modern decapod body plans seen today.

paleontology↗