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Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Ecology and Evolution, December 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • Among the highest-scoring outputs from this source (#21 of 3,717)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (99th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (98th percentile)

Mentioned by

news
20 news outlets
blogs
8 blogs
twitter
23 X users
facebook
10 Facebook pages
wikipedia
39 Wikipedia pages

Citations

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43 Dimensions

Readers on

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42 Mendeley
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Title
Mandibulate convergence in an armoured Cambrian stem chelicerate
Published in
BMC Ecology and Evolution, December 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12862-017-1088-7
Pubmed ID
Authors

Cédric Aria, Jean-Bernard Caron

Abstract

Chelicerata represents a vast clade of mostly predatory arthropods united by a distinctive body plan throughout the Phanerozoic. Their origins, however, with respect to both their ancestral morphological features and their related ecologies, are still poorly understood. In particular, it remains unclear whether their major diagnostic characters were acquired early on, and their anatomical organization rapidly constrained, or if they emerged from a stem lineage encompassing an array of structural variations, based on a more labile "panchelicerate" body plan. In this study, we reinvestigated the problematic middle Cambrian arthropod Habelia optata Walcott from the Burgess Shale, and found that it was a close relative of Sanctacaris uncata Briggs and Collins (in Habeliida, ord. nov.), both retrieved in our Bayesian phylogeny as stem chelicerates. Habelia possesses an exoskeleton covered in numerous spines and a bipartite telson as long as the rest of the body. Segments are arranged into three tagmata. The prosoma includes a reduced appendage possibly precursor to the chelicera, raptorial endopods connected to five pairs of outstandingly large and overlapping gnathobasic basipods, antennule-like exopods seemingly dissociated from the main limb axis, and, posteriorly, a pair of appendages morphologically similar to thoracic ones. While the head configuration of habeliidans anchors a seven-segmented prosoma as the chelicerate ground pattern, the peculiar size and arrangement of gnathobases and the presence of sensory/tactile appendages also point to an early convergence with the masticatory head of mandibulates. Although habeliidans illustrate the early appearance of some diagnostic chelicerate features in the evolution of euarthropods, the unique convergence of their cephalons with mandibulate anatomies suggests that these traits retained an unusual variability in these taxa. The common involvement of strong gnathal appendages across non-megacheirans Cambrian taxa also illustrates that the specialization of the head as the dedicated food-processing tagma was critical to the emergence of both lineages of extant euarthropods-Chelicerata and Mandibulata-and implies that this diversification was facilitated by the expansion of durophagous niches.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 23 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 42 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 42 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Bachelor 9 21%
Student > Master 5 12%
Researcher 4 10%
Student > Ph. D. Student 4 10%
Other 3 7%
Other 7 17%
Unknown 10 24%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 16 38%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 10 24%
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology 3 7%
Arts and Humanities 1 2%
Sports and Recreations 1 2%
Other 0 0%
Unknown 11 26%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 227. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 16 December 2023.
All research outputs
#170,167
of 25,587,485 outputs
Outputs from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#21
of 3,717 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#3,729
of 449,024 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Ecology and Evolution
#2
of 72 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,587,485 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 99th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,717 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.5. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 449,024 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 99% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 72 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 98% of its contemporaries.