Arthropods through geologic time.

[CladeArthropoda]

So, earlier today part of me felt like doing this. With data from fossileworks, I gathered every fossil arthropod genus on the site and put them in some graphs showing the biodiversity of groups through geologic time. The middle chart is composed of arachnids, myriapods, and woodlice. The right chart is, we'll, insects. The left chart is all other arthropods, including the rest of the crustaceans, trilobites, radiodonts, etc. These charts are meant to shore ecological/functional groups more than phylogenetic ones.
There is 13,126 species of insects, 1,147 species of other land arthropods, and 5,374 species of aquatic arthropods.

What's really interesting is how erratic the temporal distribution of non insects land arthropods is, probably because they are severely undersampled and there is sampling bias at play. This is true of insects as well though to a lesser degree. Since marine arthropods are preserved way more consistently, I think the biodiversity trends shown for them might be somewhat closer to reality.

What do you guys think?

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

So, earlier today part of me felt like doing this. With data from fossileworks, I gathered every fossil arthropod genus on the site and put them in some graphs showing the biodiversity of groups through geologic time. The middle chart is composed of arachnids, myriapods, and woodlice. The right chart is, we'll, insects. The left chart is all other arthropods, including the rest of the crustaceans, trilobites, radiodonts, etc. These charts are meant to shore ecological/functional groups more than phylogenetic ones.
There is 13,126 species of insects, 1,147 species of other land arthropods, and 5,374 species of aquatic arthropods.

What's really interesting is how erratic the temporal distribution of non insects land arthropods is, probably because they are severely undersampled and there is sampling bias at play. This is true of insects as well though to a lesser degree. Since marine arthropods are preserved way more consistently, I think the biodiversity trends shown for them might be somewhat closer to reality.

What do you guys think?

Very interesting stuff!! Yeah real shame land non insect arthropods are so under represented surely there’s gotta be way more species then this. I’ve even seen undiscovered spider species before. Sadly I had no camera back then saw some 5” Huntsman or crab spiders once.

 

[CladeArthropoda]

Very interesting stuff!! Yeah real shame land non insect arthropods are so under represented surely there’s gotta be way more species then this. I’ve even seen undiscovered spider species before. Sadly I had no camera back then saw some 5” Huntsman or crab spiders once.

There definitely is more genera than this, but these creatures tend to preserve poorly. Sad! Additionally, fossilworks doesnt necessarily have everything that we discovered, so there is also sampling bias from that. I were to do an actual research paper on this I would find some way to include way more genera than this.