Feeding ecology of the earliest vertebrates

Based on protochordates and extant fish, the earliest Palaeozoic vertebrates were microphagous suspension-feeding animals that pumped food-carrying water very slowly and thus required highly concentrated suspensions. Such conditions exist in benthic (not open water) aquatic environments. Feeding modes which on the basis of extant fish are closely related to benthic microphagous suspension feeding include deposit feeding, epilithic algal scraping, and macrophagous suspension feeding; early jawless vertebrates are predicted to have included all these feeding types. The gnathostome condition is predicted to have followed an initial switch from feeding on suspensions to taking tiny individual food particles (microphagous suspension-feeding → microphagous particulate-feeding → macrophagous particulate-feeding).