DOI: 10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhb7
title: Maximum recorded size of recent and fossil brachiopods

description: Changes in predator-prey interactions are often implicated as drivers of
 major evolutionary change. A prominent example is the dramatic changes in
 shallow marine assemblages during the Mesozoic Marine Revolution (MMR)
 when major clades, including rhynchonelliform brachiopods, became
 restricted and less diverse. Currently, shallow water temperate and polar
 brachiopods can be large, but in the tropics, they are all small. By
 contrast, we demonstrate that throughout the Jurassic large brachiopods
 occurred in shallow sites, from polar to tropical latitudes, but are
 absent in later periods from tropical areas. These changes occurred in
 parallel in both major orders (Rhynchonellida and Terebratulida) and also
 independently within the two sub-ordinal lineages within the Terebratulida
 (terebratulinids and terebratellinids). Increases in both grazing and
 predation pressures associated with the MMR might account for this
 pattern. However, we note that many current environments support both
 large brachiopods and high densities of grazing species and suggest that
 the pattern fits more closely to the intensification of durophagous
 predation in shallow tropical waters.
description: We collected data on the
 maximum size attained by modern brachiopod taxa. This database of 442
 terebratulide and 58 rhynchonellide taxa was assembled from published
 accounts (70 papers and monographs) and direct measurements made from
 museum samples (including a large set from the wet collections of the
 Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History (Washington
 D.C., USA), the Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Stockholm, Sweden) and our field collections.
 The following were recorded: taxon (making no attempt to revise the
 generic or specific systematics), longitude and latitude of collection
 site, depth of collection, and length of the ventral valve of the largest
 individual encountered (in mm). For trawl data, we used the minimum depth
 recorded. Taxonomic coverage of the database is good with 95% of extant
 genera of both terebratulides and rhynchonellides captured and including
 c.90% of the type species. Our database was then filtered by depth to
 capture sub-samples representing collection depths of less than 80m (N=122
 for terebratulides and N = 12 for rhynchonellides).
 Palaeontological data were
 collected using 170 published papers and monographs, supplemented by
 direct measurements of specimens in museum collections of the Sedgwick
 Museum of Earth Sciences (Cambridge University, UK), the Oxford University
 Museum of Natural History (UK), the Natural History Museum (London, UK),
 the Naturhistoriska
 riksmuseet (Stockholm,
 Sweden) and the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of Natural History
 (Washington D.C., USA). For every fauna (i.e., taxa collected from the
 same locality and time interval) only the maximum-sized individual of the
 largest each of the terebratulide or rhynchonellide taxa present was
 recorded. The following data for the largest individual from each order
 (and for Jurassic terebratulides for each of the suborders
 Terebratellinida and Terebratulinida) were recorded: locality, precise age
 of deposit and length of the ventral valve (in mm). Only those samples
 collected with clear evidence of occurrence in the photic zone were
 included. Palaeolatitudes were derived either using the established value
 on the Paleobiology Database or from published local palaeogeographic
 reconstructions. 
description: # Maximum recorded size of recent and fossil brachiopods
 [https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhb7](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.kprr4xhb7) These data were collected either from the literature or field/museum specimens. There are two sheets - one recording the maximum length shown by any species at a specific modern site, the second recording the maximum length of the largest recorded species of either a terebratulide or rhynchonellide brachiopod from fossil sites. ## Description of the data and file structure The data are arranged in two worksheets. Supplementary Information 1 refers to the data for extant taxa. The data for the two orders of brachiopods (terebratulides and rhynchonellides) are separate. For each record, we give the name of the taxon (NB: we did not revise the taxonomy of these), the maximum length of an individual (in mm), geographic locality, source of the record, latitude (to the nearest half degree) and water depth (in m). Supplementary Information 2 refers to the palaeontological data. Here again, the two orders are separated. The information in the columns is the data source, locality, estimated palaeolatitude at the time of deposition, and the maximum size of any species. All records are adjudged to have been deposited in the photic zone by their co-occurrence with either photosynthetic or photosymbiotic fauna. The data are sorted by geological period. For the Jurassic terebratulides - the final column designates each record as either A or B to signify separate sub-orders. * Mybp = Millions of years before present. Institutional Abbreviations: * OUM = Oxford University Museum of Natural History (Oxford, U.K.) * Swedish NHM = Swedish Natural History Museum, Naturhistoriska riksmuseet (Stockholm, Sweden) * NIWA = National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (New Zealand) * AM = The Australian Museum (Sydney, Australia) * BAS = British Antarctic Survey (Cambridge, U.K.) * USNM = Smithsonian Institution National Museum of National History (Washington D.C., U.S.A.) * Author's own collections = Located in the Department of Earth Sciences (University of Cambridge, U.K.) ## Sharing/Access information NA ## Code/Software NA