Shallow-marine testate amoebae with internal structures from the Lower Devonian of China

Kai Wang; Hong-He Xu; Bing-Cai Liu; Jiao Bai; Yao Wang; Peng Tang; Jian-Feng Lu; Yi Wang

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.106678

Shallow-marine testate amoebae with internal structures from the Lower Devonian of China

iScience. 2023 Apr 18;26(5):106678. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106678. eCollection 2023 May 19.

Authors

Kai Wang^{1

2}, Hong-He Xu¹, Bing-Cai Liu^{1

2}, Jiao Bai^{1

2}, Yao Wang³, Peng Tang¹, Jian-Feng Lu¹, Yi Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Palaeobiology and Stratigraphy, Nanjing Institute of Geology and Palaeontology and Center for Excellence in Life and Paleoenvironment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing 210008, China.
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
³ School of Geography and Tourism, Qufu Normal University, Rizhao 276826, China.

Abstract

Testate amoebae, a polyphyletic protist group inhabiting a wide variety of extant ecosystems, have evolved as far back as early Neoproterozoic. However, their fossil record is discontinuous and biased toward empty shells. Here, we report an arcellinid testate amoeba species, Cangwuella ampulliformis gen. nov., sp. nov., from a shallow-marine community in the Early Devonian of Guangxi, southwestern China. With the aid of scanning electron microscopy and X-ray micro-tomography, we find that the shell of our testate amoeba contains some acetabuliform structures. Although such configuration does not match exactly with the known internal structures in extant testate amoebae, our fossils highlight the potential of exploring the ecological relationships between fossil testate amoebae and their associated organisms, and increase our knowledge on the diversity of testate amoebae in Early Devonian environments.

Keywords: Ecology; Microorganism; Paleontology.