The Use of Ostracods in Palaeoenvironmental Studies, or What can you do with an Ostracod Shell?

Abstract

Over recent decades ostracods have become established indicators of ecosystem health, biodiversity and environmental change. With applications ranging across the earth sciences (from modern pollution studies to sea-level change, basin evolution, plate tectonics, palaeoceanography) and related disciplines such as archaeology, ecology and genetics, their utility extends to almost every aquatic and semi-aquatic habitat, from the deep ocean to high mountain springs. Their temporal range is now known to cover the last 500 million years of earth history.The study of fossil ostracod assemblages follows traditional palaeontological lines of investigation, including taphonomy, morphometries and diversity, but there are a number of methodological approaches, specific to the ostracods, that render them potentially one of the most versatile organisms in the fossil record. Ostracods have been employed on a range oftemporal and spatial scales to reconstruct past environments, from world-wide, geological-scale global events in the deep-sea through to smaller-scale studies of lakes and their archives of local environmental change over recent centuries.Much information can be obtained from ostracod assemblages but it is particularly through recent advances in the chemical and physical study of single shells or carapaces that the utility of these organisms has been brought to the fore. In this paper the potential palaeoenvironmental information derived from an ostracod assemblage, a single species, or an individual shell is reviewed. The main applications for ostracods are outlined for marine and non-marine ecosystems. Finally, the role of the ostracods in detailing the recent history of the Aral Sea is outlined.