Podcast 219 - Brachiopod Vape Bros

The gang discusses two papers that look at examples of cohabitation and unique ecological interactions in the Cambrian. The first paper looks at multiple animals living together in a hemichordate living chamber, the and the second looks at a potential example of parasitism on brachiopods. Meanwhile, James flips a coin, Curt has to live with some consequences, and Amanda ranks things from meh to bad.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): Our friends talk about two papers that look at animals which are living together, sometimes not because both animals want that. The first paper looks at these long animals with no legs that live together. There are two different types of these long animals living the in the same spot, which is a home that looks like the ones built by the bigger of the two long animals, but the home seems to be a bit too big. Because the small long things do not have bits that could cut off parts of the bigger long thing, they think that these two animals would have lived in the same spot and been just fine. Since the homes are bigger than either animal, it means we still have to figure out why the homes are so big. It could be that the bigger long animals could be kids and the homes were built by the grown ups for the kids to live in. The second paper looks at these small long round thing that was found on these animals with hard parts on either side which sit on the ground in the water and pull food out of the water. The animals with hard parts could have these small long round things on them or they could not. The animals with hard parts that had these small long round things were smaller than the ones that did not. The way the small long round things were put onto the animals with hard parts makes it look like they are homes for other small animals that would take the food out of the mouth of the animals with hard parts.   References: Zhang, Zhifei, et al. "An encrusting kleptoparasite-host interaction from the early Cambrian." Nature communications 11.1 (2020): 1-7. Nanglu, Karma, and Jean-Bernard Caron.  "Symbiosis in the Cambrian: enteropneust tubes from the Burgess Shale  co-inhabited by commensal polychaetes." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 288.1951 (2021): 20210061.