The number of diatom valves and fragments per gram of surface sediment in the Atlantic Ocean accurately reflects diatom abundance in the overlying waters, without any evidence of significant lateral drift during settling to the sea bottom. The distribution pattern of the number of resting spores per gram is similar to that for the whole and fragmented diatom valves. Fresh water diatoms and opal phytoliths are abundant in the sediments off the west coast of Africa where they have been deposited by the Trade Winds.

Despite the relatively small number of core tops analyzed, the abundance and distribution patterns of diatoms in the sediments exhibit striking similarities to the patterns of primary productivity, phosphates, and annual production of silica in suspension in surface waters. Areas with high phosphate values and primary productivity and, therefore, areas of upwelling can be inferred from the quantitative distribution of diatoms in the sediments. Q-mode factor analysis, based on the abundance of forty-two species in thirty-seven core tops, produced six diatom species assemblages whose distributions provide additional information on the positions of certain water masses and major currents.

Since the data on the quantitative distribution of diatom valves as well as on the diatom assemblages in the sediments of the Atlantic Ocean today allow prediction of certain water mass characteristics and circulation patterns of the overlying waters, they therefore, permit the reconstruction of paleoceanographic circulation patterns in ancient Atlantic Oceans, using the diatom distribution in sediments from dated horizons.

A scanning electron microscope survey of the regular echinoid test reveals that the outer surface of its component coronal plates may be sculptured with a fine-relief ornament that is species-characteristic for those species presently surveyed. Structural resemblances in surface ornamentation are more marked in species living in similar habitats than in those species that are apparently phyletically related. Plate ornament is related to skeletal magnesium levels. It is tentatively suggested that low growth rate echinoids that inhabit “low-energy” environments (and exhibit low total skeletal magnesium levels) and “high-energy” habitat-exploiting species with high growth rates (and relatively high skeletal magnesium levels) may have differential patterns of plate growth that can be distinguished by the degree of ornamentation of the plate surface.

Subcolony boundaries within Paleozoic bryozoan colonies, not otherwise easily observable, can be located precisely by computer mapping of variables derived from Fourier series. The monticule-centered subcolonies were maintained by morphogenetic gradients that controlled zooecial size and form, zooidal degeneration (producing brown bodies), and the spacing of monticules with respect to each other. These gradients were probably determined by the release of a budding inhibitor from polymorphic zooids within the monticule. In colonies with active monticular budding the morphogenetic gradients represent ontogenetic series, as the zooids that arose in the monticule gradually migrated outward along modified spiral pathways. Polymorphism, including reproductive functions, is probably reflected in the spatial order of zooids away from a monticule. In subcolonies with monticular budding, polymorphs represent different stages in the life history of a single zooid, with gradual transitions in zooecial form between castes.

The structural similarity between monticules and oghurd dunes supports the idea that they also functioned as excurrent water outlets, possibly with reproductive polymorphs clustered near the outflow. The variability of monticular size and spacing in some colonies indicates that hydrodynamic efficiency was compromised by the need for developmental plasticity. The development of active budding within monticules is considered an ecophenotypic response to the external environment, suggesting that all monticules within the Stenolaemata were potential budding sites. Monticules were successful adaptations in bryozoans because they performed a multiplicity of functions. While regulating the morphogenesis of the colony, they simultaneously served the metabolic functions of waste removal, feeding and reproduction.

Pelagic marine mammals (cetaceans and pinnipeds) generally invaded the seas rapidly in response to new ecologic opportunities. After cetaceans initially appeared and radiated in the Eocene, they declined in the Oligocene, but radiated into many new adaptive types in the Miocene. Pinnipeds apparently evolved in the earliest Miocene, rapidly radiating into many adaptive types. We propose that the radiations, and declines, of species were responses to the availability of trophic resources in oceanic environments. These trophic resources are closely related to upwelling processes in the oceans. We suggest that increased upwelling intensity, due to climatic or tectonic events, permitted the initial invasions and radiations and that decreased intensity caused cetacean extinctions in the Oligocene.

Bryozoans are colonial animals and this permits the partitioning of their morphologic variability into components of within colony (i.e. within a single genotype) and between colony (i.e. between genotype) variance. These data have been obtained for four species of the endemic deep-sea genus Euginoma for a series of characters. In 8 comparisons, one component of the total variance dominated at the 5% level. Population (between colony) variance contributed significantly to the total variance in 63% of the comparisons (5 of 8); individual (within colony) variance contributed significantly to the total variance in 37% of the comparisons (3 of 8).

Compared to shallow water species, the surprising feature of the deep-sea data is that the between colony component of variance is as high as it is. Possibly in the more stable, deep-sea environment, the genotypic contribution to the variance of each individual colony is expressed to a greater degree than in the more variable, shallow water regime. If so, then analyses of variability in colonial animals may be an independent means of ascertaining stability gradients in the fossil record.

The covariation patterns of the postcranial skeleton in eight species of moas (Aves, Dinornithidae) from the Pleistocene of New Zealand are described using multiple factor analysis. Rotation schemes include an orthogonal Varimax and oblique (direct quartimin) simple structure solutions.

Four major patterns of covariation are resolved: a length factor, primarily that of leg length; a width factor, including pelvis width and long bone widths; a sternal breadth factor; and a sternal length-posterior pelvis length factor. The first two patterns represent a functional separation between body size and those aspects of the skeleton, scaling allometrically, adapted to support body weight. The sternal breadth factor may indicate that features contributing to trunk support are independent from those width measurements of the pelvis and hindlimb bones. The sternal length-posterior pelvis length factor reveals a pattern of covariation that is somewhat independent of other patterns (long bone lengths) determining variability in body size.