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The evolutionary integration of complex morphological structures is a macroevolutionary pattern in which morphogenetic components evolve in a coordinated fashion, which can result from the interplay among processes of developmental, genetic integration, and different types of selection. We tested hypotheses of ecological versus developmental factors underlying patterns of within‐species and evolutionary...
In this article, we investigate convergent evolution toward durophagy in carnivoran skull shape using geometric morphometrics in a sample of living and extinct species. Principal components analysis indicate that, in spite of the different dietary resources consumed by durophages—that is, bone‐crackers and bamboo‐feeders—both groups of carnivorans share portions of skull phenotypic spaces. We identify...
An accurate understanding of species diversity is essential to studies across a wide range of biological subdisciplines. However, delimiting species remains challenging in evolutionary radiations where morphological diversification is rapid and accompanied by little genetic differentiation or when genetic lineage divergence is not accompanied by morphological change. We investigate the utility of...
Tetrapod limb development has been studied extensively for decades, yet the strength and role of developmental constraints in this process remains unresolved. Mammals exhibit a particularly wide array of limb morphologies associated with various locomotion modes and behaviors, providing a useful system for identifying periods of developmental constraint and conserved developmental mechanisms or morphologies...
Understanding the mechanisms by which phenotypic divergence occurs is central to speciation research. These mechanisms can be revealed by measuring differences in traits that are subject to different selection pressures; greater influence of different types of selection can be inferred from greater divergence in associated traits. Here, we address the potential roles of natural and sexual selection...
We investigated patterns of evolutionary integration in the appendicular skeleton of mammalian carnivores. The findings are discussed in relation to performance selection in terms of organismal function as a potential mechanism underlying integration. Interspecific shape covariation was quantified by two‐block partial least‐squares (2B‐PLS) analysis of 3D landmark data within a phylogenetic context...
Butterfly wings harbor highly diverse phenotypes and are involved in many functions. Wing size and shape result from interactions between adaptive processes, phylogenetic history, and developmental constraints, which are complex to disentangle. Here, we focus on the genus Morpho (Nymphalidae: Satyrinae, 30 species), which presents a high diversity of sizes, shapes, and color patterns. First, we generate...
The structure of environmentally induced phenotypic covariation can influence the effective strength and magnitude of natural selection. Yet our understanding of the factors that contribute to and influence the evolutionary lability of such covariation is poor. Most studies have either examined environmental variation without accounting for covariation, or examined phenotypic and genetic covariation...
The importance of the environment in shaping phenotypic evolution lies at the core of evolutionary biology. Chipmunks of the genus Tamias (subgenus Neotamias) are part of a very recent radiation, occupying a wide range of environments with marked niche partitioning among species. One open question is if and how those differences in environments affected phenotypic evolution in this lineage. Herein...
Actinopterygians (ray‐finned fishes) successfully passed through four of the big five mass extinction events of the Phanerozoic, but the effects of these crises on the group are poorly understood. Many researchers have assumed that the Permo‐Triassic mass extinction (PTME) and end‐Triassic extinction (ETE) had little impact on actinopterygians, despite devastating many other groups. Here, two morphometric...
Flower form is one of many floral features thought to be shaped by pollinator‐mediated selection. Although the drivers of variation in flower shape have often been examined in microevolutionary studies, relatively few have tested the relationship between shape evolution and shifts in pollination system across clades. In the present study, we use morphometric approaches to quantify shape variation...
Odontocete (echolocating whale) skulls exhibit extreme posterior displacement and overlapping of facial bones, here referred to as retrograde cranial telescoping. To examine retrograde cranial telescoping across 40 million years of whale evolution, we collected 3D scans of whale skulls spanning odontocete evolution. We used a sliding semilandmark morphometric approach with Procrustes superimposition...
Morphological integration refers to the fact that different phenotypic traits of organisms are not fully independent from each other, and tend to covary to different degrees. The covariation among traits is thought to reflect properties of the species' genetic architecture and thus can have an impact on evolutionary responses. Furthermore, if morphological integration changes along the history of...
Jointly developing a comprehensive tree of life from living and fossil taxa has long been a fundamental goal in evolutionary biology. One major challenge has stemmed from difficulties in merging evidence from extant and extinct organisms. While these efforts have resulted in varying stages of synthesis, they have been hindered by their dependence on qualitative descriptions of morphology. Though rarely...
The molecular chaperone protein HSP90 has been proposed to modulate genotype–phenotype relationship in a broad range of organisms. We explore the proposed genetic modifier effect of HSP90 through a genomewide analysis. Here, we show that HSP90 functions as a genetic modifier of genital morphology in Drosophila melanogaster. We identified a large number of single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) with...
The study of modularity is paramount for understanding trends of phenotypic evolution, and for determining the extent to which covariation patterns are conserved across taxa and levels of biological organization. However, biologists currently lack quantitative methods for statistically comparing the strength of modular signal across datasets, and a robust approach for evaluating alternative modular...
Evolutionary integration (covariation) of traits has long fascinated biologists because of its potential to elucidate factors that have shaped morphological evolution. Studies of tetrapod crania have identified patterns of evolutionary integration that reflect functional or developmental interactions among traits, but no studies to date have sampled widely across the species‐rich lissamphibian order...
The kinetic skull is a key innovation that allowed snakes to capture, manipulate, and swallow prey exclusively using their heads using the coordinated movement of eight bones. Despite these unique feeding behaviors, patterns of evolutionary integration and modularity within the feeding bones of snakes in a phylogenetic framework have yet to be addressed. Here, we use a dataset of 60 μCT‐scanned skulls...
Analysis of trait covariation plays a pivotal role in the study of phenotypic evolution. The magnitude of covariation is often quantified with statistics based on dispersion of eigenvalues of a covariance or correlation matrix—eigenvalue dispersion indices. This study clarifies the statistical justifications of these statistics and elaborates on their sampling properties. The relative eigenvalue variance...
Understanding how and why phenotypic traits covary is a major interest in evolutionary biology. Biologists have long sought to characterize the extent of morphological integration in organisms, but comparing levels of integration for a set of traits across taxa has been hampered by the lack of a reliable summary measure and testing procedure. Here, we propose a standardized effect size for this purpose,...
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