Jonathan R. Bryan, PhD

This work involves study of Upper Eocene & Lower Oligocene carbonates of the Florida Platform & eastern Gulf. Because of their great abundance &ecological sensitivity, LBF are especially useful in carbonate facies analysis, not only in their bio/litho facies associations, but also biometrically.  The complex tests of the photosymbiont-bearing LBF are very sensitive to light & water energy & this is reflected in test size, robustness, & internal morphology. The ecological response of other carbonate-producing organisms (calcareous algae, corals, bryozoa) is equally of interest because the Florida Platform broadly extends across climatic zones, thus exhibiting both heterozoan & photozoan biosedimentologic regimes in carbonate platform construction. This is an ongoing project with increasing field localities & new cores. 

This work includes study of the Salt Mountain Limestone of Alabama, a Paleocene coral-algal-sponge reef (with a large, undescribed poriferan fauna), as well as other sponge-algal reef systems, and the post-Cretaceous recovery of reef ecosystems (i.e., sponge-algal framework before the recovery of scleractinian-dominated systems).

This work involves interpreting the enormous morphologic variability of large forams in terms of heterochrony (i.e., the adaptive significance of variation of reproductive timing & growth rate during ontogeny). The larger objective of this research is to investigate the widespread convergence of large forams through time (e.g., fusulinids & alveolinids, Cretaceous & Paleogene orbitoids, etc.) and explore its implications. Convergence is common evolutionary phenomena, but one that has received minimal investigation in invertebrates. But, as suggested by the recent work of Conway-Morris, convergence may in fact be a deep insight into evolutionary constraint and direction.