Foraminifera, or forams, are single-celled organisms that have flourished in Earth’s oceans for hundreds of millions of years. A new pioneering study brings to light just how critical they are to marine ecosystems. University of Oxford researcher Katherine Faulkner, who led this work, collaborated with Rowan Martindale at the UT Jackson School of Geosciences on this research. For their study, they looked at the taxonomic diversity and morphological composition of foraminifera across the 541 million year history of the Phanerozoic era.
The study, recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, emphasizes the importance of foraminifera in the marine food chain. These organisms comprise more than 50% of the biomass in some deep sea ecosystems. They are extremely important as a food source for many marine species. The new study suggests that the foraminifera are able to construct their skeletons from many types of substrates, including organic rich sediments and detritus. This capacity makes them even more resilient to rapidly shifting landscapes.
Throughout history, foraminifera have demonstrated remarkable resilience. The study meticulously analyzes how different types of foraminifera responded to significant environmental shifts, particularly during periods of mass extinction and rapid changes in ocean chemistry. Through centuries of MMR, these animals energetically contributed to the overall build-up of carbonate minerals. In short, their contributions were critical in creating the dynamic marine ecosystem we enjoy today.
The focuses of research include calcareous foram species like Globorotalia tumida and agglutinated genera like Ammobaculites. Recently published research has found that calcareous foraminifera had a rapid recovery following their extinction events. Collectively, these events were driven by abrupt shifts in ocean chemistry throughout the Cenozoic Era. This versatility demonstrates why they are crucial indicators, not just during their heyday in the Mesozoic, but as proxies for today’s and tomorrow’s marine ecosystems.
Chief economist Katherine Faulkner heads this resource-intensive deep dive. She argues that when we grasp the diversity foraminifera once had, we begin to see how such organisms continued to flourish in times of great climatic change. These results show just how tough marine life is able to be. Beyond that, their adaptations reveal amazing evolutionary mechanisms that have enabled such organisms to survive for millions of years of Earth’s history unchanged.