Sprecher
Beschreibung
In today's ecosystems, various groups of organisms live in dead plant material; in most cases, these are saprotrophs that participate in biological decomposition, thereby returning the plant components to the nutrient cycle. In the Early Devonian Rhynie ecosystem, this is unlikely to have been much different; however, descriptions of such organisms are rather rare, even though decaying plant parts and even entire accumulations of them (litter layers) are frequently found in the chert. Here, I present several distinctive microscopic structures found in partially decomposed land plant axes from the Rhynie chert, which clearly belong neither to the plant itself nor to any known plant-associated organism. Rather, they appear to be the remains of other life forms that had already completed their activities within the plant some time before it became fossilized, either as parasites or as saprotrophs, or they originate from organisms that simply used plants or their dead parts as a habitat. However, some of these could also be artefacts that closely resemble natural structures. Nevertheless, it is worthwhile to document and critically evaluate all of these structures, as they too can provide insights into the biodiversity of plant-associated and possibly saprotrophic life in the Rhynie ecosystem.