Question

Please help me I do not understand. Thank you!

In your own words first, discuss three causes for the Cambrian explosion. Then address this question: Multicellularity evolved right before the Cambrian explosion; how do you think multicellularity enabled the Cambrian explosion (base your response on our discussion regarding the evolution of multicellularity).

Answer 1

Previous discussion: Many environmental changes that occured in those times have been the focus of discussion for the Cambrian explosion. A remarked increasing in oxygen levels has been proposed, oxygen is a basic fuel for animal life, thus the increased levels of this molecule might have provided enough resources for life to develop faster and thus diverge fasster, leading to such explotion. This strong development that occurred due to oxygen increase might have been supported by the finding of new niches in the planet, the increasing number of animal lineages allowed them to push into new niches, to occupy different niches in different environments allowed them to specialize to them, thus further change across time.

Multicellularity in play: This factor has a lot to do with the new niche exploring. Multicellularity provides a big possibility to create new forms, new structures, new body forms, new strategies. All this new traits are variation which evolutionary mechanisms will work with. We could say that multicellularity provided the increase in variation, and evolutionary mechanism played with them to form different lineages. The huge amount of differences created the huge amount of differentiation, specialization, and finally speciation, easily leading to a diversification explotion.