Nautilus: biology, systematics, and paleobiology as viewed from 2015

Abstract

The natural history of the nautilid genus Nautilus, composed of a controversial number of extinct and extant species, has been the subject of scientific scrutiny for centuries. While a great research effort lasting from the mid-1970s to 1990s contributed vast amounts of new information concerning the evolutionary history, current diversity, mode of life, and ecological position in its habitats took place, since that time there has been far less concentrated research, and most of that has concerned the diversity and genetic distance of isolated populations using genetic techniques. In spite of the reprinting of one of the two 1987 books examining aspects of Nautilus biology, the only new field-based work on Nautilus until recently has been the important, Ph.D. thesis conducted by Andrew Dunstan on the isolated, seamount inhabiting nautiluses living on Osprey Reef, Australia. In this contribution we attempt to integrate Dunstan’s important new work with other, post-2010 research so as to update our current understanding of the evolutionary history (based on fossil as well as modern genetic work), characteristic habitats, mode of life, and physiology so as to give a 2015 perspective on those aspects of the natural history of Nautilus that are of paleobiological relevance.