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The modern and fossil record of farming behavior

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2019

Shannon Hsieh Open the ORCID record for Shannon Hsieh [Opens in a new window] ,
Alec Schassburger  and
Roy E. Plotnick Open the ORCID record for Roy E. Plotnick [Opens in a new window]
Shannon Hsieh
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Alec Schassburger
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Roy E. Plotnick
Affiliation:
Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago, 845 West Taylor Street, Chicago, Illinois 60607, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
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Abstract

Farming is a behavior in which an organism promotes the growth and reproduction of other organisms in or on a substrate as a food source. A number of trace fossils have been suggested to record the occurrence of farming behavior. These include the deep-sea graphoglyptid trace fossils, proposed to be microbial farms on the seafloor, and terrestrial fossil social insect nests thought to represent fungicultural behavior. The presumed farming behavior of graphoglyptids is the basis of the ethological category agrichnia. Four criteria have been proposed as diagnostic of farming behavior, and these can be applied to both observed modern and proposed trace fossil examples of farming behavior. The evidence for farming behavior in the social insect trace record is strong but is much weaker in the case of graphoglyptids. The use of agrichnia as an ethological category should be limited to well-supported cases.

Type
On The Record
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 45 , Issue 3 , August 2019 , pp. 395 - 404
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society. All rights reserved 2019 

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References

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