Introduction

During the Early Permian, the Earth was shifting from an icehouse climate to a greenhouse. This was part of a series of cold-warm pulses occurring at this time. To have a better idea of how the ecosystem was in such an event, we chose samples from four locations of the Colwell Creek Pond site of north-central Texas, which corresponds to this time period, and made qualitative and quantitative analysis of the flora. The flora was also inspected for insect damage, so as to have a better idea of the direction that insect herbivory, in its beginnings, was taking.

Methods

• For the specimen count, the quadrat method was used (Pfefferkorn, Mustafa & Hass, 1975)
• The specimen is counted only once per quadrat, regardless of the number of specimens present
  
• The result is frequency data; how often a particular taxa is present throughout the samples

Results

• There were three dominant species in the flora of these four sites:
  Auritifolia waggoneri (common - 34.14% ), Walchian conifer type 1 (common - 34. 14%), Taeniopteris type 1(common - 25. 33 %)
• The majority of the specimens were rare, with only 1 or 2 counts in some cases.
• Out of all the specimens Auritifolia waggoneri showed the most damage, with 58.71% of the samples being affected.
• The other two affected were Taeniopteris type 1 (minimum damage) and conifers type 1 and 3 (with what appear to be galls)
• Very few other taxa were affected, but their count was so low that a significant count could not be achieved.

Auritifolia waggoneri

Taeniopteris

Walchian conifer

Conclusions

• Using the quadrat method we come to the conclusion that this was a low diversity environment, in which three of the taxa dominated similarly in the four sites.
• The amount of insect damage in the Auritifolia (thin-leaved) correlates with studies that suggest that insects attack mostly thin-leaved, high energy plants (Wilf et. al, 2001)
• Conifer type 1, being as abundant as Auritifolia, was not as heavily predated.
• This flora can be easily compared to modern environments, in which insect herbivory acts in much the same way.
• Further studies of the insect damage of this flora need to be conducted.
• Identification of the unknown specimens should be consider in future studies

Redbed layering