page_title: Lobopodia
section_title: Paleoecology
hierarchical_section_title: Lobopodia / Paleoecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Life restoration of Ovatiovermis cribratus
context_page_description: The lobopodians, members of the informal group Lobopodia, or the formally erected phylum Lobopoda Cavalier-Smith, are panarthropods with stubby legs called lobopods, a term which may also be used as a common name of this group as well. While the definition of lobopodians may differ between literatures, it usually refers to a group of soft-bodied, worm-like fossil panarthropods such as Aysheaia and Hallucigenia.
  The oldest near-complete fossil lobopodians date to the Lower Cambrian; some are also known from Ordovician, Silurian and Carboniferous Lagerstätten. Some bear toughened claws, plates or spines, which are commonly preserved as carbonaceous or mineralized microfossils in Cambrian strata.
context_section_description: Lobopodians may have occupied a wide range of ecological niches. Although most of them had undifferentiated appendages and straight gut, which would suggest a simple sediment-feeding lifestyle, sophisticated digestive glands and large size of gilled lobopodians and siberiids would allow them to consume larger food items, and their robust frontal appendages may even suggest a predatory lifestyle. On the other hand, luolishaniids such as Luolishania and Ovatiovermis have elaborate feather-like lobopods that presumably formed 'baskets' for suspension or filter-feeding. Lobopods with curved termial claws may have given some lobopodians the ability to climb on substrances.
  Not much is known about the physiology of lobopodians. There are evidence suggest that lobopodians moult just like other ecdysozoan taxa, but the outline and ornamentation of the harden sclerite did not vary during ontogeny. The gill-like structures on the body flaps of gilled lobopodians and ramified extensions on the lobopods of Jianshanopodia may provide respiratory function (gills). Pambdelurion may control the movement of their lobopods in a way similar to onychophorans.
caption: Reconstruction of a suspension-feeding lobopodian Ovatiovermis cribratus, showing how it use the anterior 6 pairs of lobopods to gather food particles, while using the posterior 3 pairs of lobopods to anchor itself.[36]
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