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A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb

BACKGROUND: The shape of the appendicular bones in mammals usually reflects adaptations towards different locomotor abilities. However, other aspects such as body size and phylogeny also play an important role in shaping bone design. We used 3D landmark-based geometric morphometrics to analyse the s...

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Autores principales: Martín-Serra, Alberto, Figueirido, Borja, Palmqvist, Paul
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4065579/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24927753
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-14-129
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author Martín-Serra, Alberto
Figueirido, Borja
Palmqvist, Paul
author_facet Martín-Serra, Alberto
Figueirido, Borja
Palmqvist, Paul
author_sort Martín-Serra, Alberto
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: The shape of the appendicular bones in mammals usually reflects adaptations towards different locomotor abilities. However, other aspects such as body size and phylogeny also play an important role in shaping bone design. We used 3D landmark-based geometric morphometrics to analyse the shape of the hind limb bones (i.e., femur, tibia, and pelvic girdle bones) of living and extinct terrestrial carnivorans (Mammalia, Carnivora) to quantitatively investigate the influence of body size, phylogeny, and locomotor behaviour in shaping the morphology of these bones. We also investigated the main patterns of morphological variation within a phylogenetic context. RESULTS: Size and phylogeny strongly influence the shape of the hind limb bones. In contrast, adaptations towards different modes of locomotion seem to have little influence. Principal Components Analysis and the study of phylomorphospaces suggest that the main source of variation in bone shape is a gradient of slenderness-robustness. CONCLUSION: The shape of the hind limb bones is strongly influenced by body size and phylogeny, but not to a similar degree by locomotor behaviour. The slender-robust “morphological bipolarity” found in bone shape variability is probably related to a trade-off between maintaining energetic efficiency and withstanding resistance to stresses. The balance involved in this trade-off impedes the evolution of high phenotypic variability. In fact, both morphological extremes (slender/robust) are adaptive in different selective contexts and lead to a convergence in shape among taxa with extremely different ecologies but with similar biomechanical demands. Strikingly, this “one-to-many mapping” pattern of evolution between morphology and ecology in hind limb bones is in complete contrast to the “many-to-one mapping” pattern found in the evolution of carnivoran skull shape. The results suggest that there are more constraints in the evolution of the shape of the appendicular skeleton than in that of skull shape because of the strong biomechanical constraints imposed by terrestrial locomotion.
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spelling pubmed-40655792014-06-22 A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb Martín-Serra, Alberto Figueirido, Borja Palmqvist, Paul BMC Evol Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: The shape of the appendicular bones in mammals usually reflects adaptations towards different locomotor abilities. However, other aspects such as body size and phylogeny also play an important role in shaping bone design. We used 3D landmark-based geometric morphometrics to analyse the shape of the hind limb bones (i.e., femur, tibia, and pelvic girdle bones) of living and extinct terrestrial carnivorans (Mammalia, Carnivora) to quantitatively investigate the influence of body size, phylogeny, and locomotor behaviour in shaping the morphology of these bones. We also investigated the main patterns of morphological variation within a phylogenetic context. RESULTS: Size and phylogeny strongly influence the shape of the hind limb bones. In contrast, adaptations towards different modes of locomotion seem to have little influence. Principal Components Analysis and the study of phylomorphospaces suggest that the main source of variation in bone shape is a gradient of slenderness-robustness. CONCLUSION: The shape of the hind limb bones is strongly influenced by body size and phylogeny, but not to a similar degree by locomotor behaviour. The slender-robust “morphological bipolarity” found in bone shape variability is probably related to a trade-off between maintaining energetic efficiency and withstanding resistance to stresses. The balance involved in this trade-off impedes the evolution of high phenotypic variability. In fact, both morphological extremes (slender/robust) are adaptive in different selective contexts and lead to a convergence in shape among taxa with extremely different ecologies but with similar biomechanical demands. Strikingly, this “one-to-many mapping” pattern of evolution between morphology and ecology in hind limb bones is in complete contrast to the “many-to-one mapping” pattern found in the evolution of carnivoran skull shape. The results suggest that there are more constraints in the evolution of the shape of the appendicular skeleton than in that of skull shape because of the strong biomechanical constraints imposed by terrestrial locomotion. BioMed Central 2014-06-14 /pmc/articles/PMC4065579/ /pubmed/24927753 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-14-129 Text en Copyright © 2014 Martín-Serra et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Research Article
Martín-Serra, Alberto
Figueirido, Borja
Palmqvist, Paul
A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title_full A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title_fullStr A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title_full_unstemmed A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title_short A three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
title_sort three-dimensional analysis of the morphological evolution and locomotor behaviour of the carnivoran hind limb
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4065579/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24927753
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2148-14-129
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