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Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers

Among amniotes, numerous lineages are subject to an evolutionary trend toward body mass and size increases. Large terrestrial species may face important constraints linked to weight bearing, and the limb segments are particularly affected by such constraints due to their role in body support and loc...

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Autores principales: Mallet, Christophe, Cornette, Raphaël, Billet, Guillaume, Houssaye, Alexandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6766374/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31579585
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7647
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author Mallet, Christophe
Cornette, Raphaël
Billet, Guillaume
Houssaye, Alexandra
author_facet Mallet, Christophe
Cornette, Raphaël
Billet, Guillaume
Houssaye, Alexandra
author_sort Mallet, Christophe
collection PubMed
description Among amniotes, numerous lineages are subject to an evolutionary trend toward body mass and size increases. Large terrestrial species may face important constraints linked to weight bearing, and the limb segments are particularly affected by such constraints due to their role in body support and locomotion. Such groups showing important limb modifications related to high body mass have been called “graviportal.” Often considered graviportal, rhinoceroses are among the heaviest terrestrial mammals and are thus of particular interest to understand the limb modifications related to body mass and size increase. Here, we present a morphofunctional study of the shape variation of the limb long bones among the five living rhinos to understand how the shape may vary between these species in relation with body size, body mass and phylogeny. We used three dimensional geometric morphometrics and comparative analyses to quantify the shape variation. Our results indicate that the five species display important morphological differences depending on the considered bones. The humerus and the femur exhibit noticeable interspecific differences between African and Asiatic rhinos, associated with a significant effect of body mass. The radius and ulna are more strongly correlated with body mass. While the tibia exhibits shape variation both linked with phylogeny and body mass, the fibula displays the greatest intraspecific variation. We highlight three distinct morphotypes of bone shape, which appear in accordance with the phylogeny. The influence of body mass also appears unequally expressed on the different bones. Body mass increase among the five extant species is marked by an increase of the general robustness, more pronounced attachments for muscles and a development of medial parts of the bones. Our study underlines that the morphological features linked to body mass increase are not similar between rhinos and other heavy mammals such as elephants and hippos, suggesting that the weight bearing constraint can lead to different morphological responses.
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spelling pubmed-67663742019-10-02 Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers Mallet, Christophe Cornette, Raphaël Billet, Guillaume Houssaye, Alexandra PeerJ Evolutionary Studies Among amniotes, numerous lineages are subject to an evolutionary trend toward body mass and size increases. Large terrestrial species may face important constraints linked to weight bearing, and the limb segments are particularly affected by such constraints due to their role in body support and locomotion. Such groups showing important limb modifications related to high body mass have been called “graviportal.” Often considered graviportal, rhinoceroses are among the heaviest terrestrial mammals and are thus of particular interest to understand the limb modifications related to body mass and size increase. Here, we present a morphofunctional study of the shape variation of the limb long bones among the five living rhinos to understand how the shape may vary between these species in relation with body size, body mass and phylogeny. We used three dimensional geometric morphometrics and comparative analyses to quantify the shape variation. Our results indicate that the five species display important morphological differences depending on the considered bones. The humerus and the femur exhibit noticeable interspecific differences between African and Asiatic rhinos, associated with a significant effect of body mass. The radius and ulna are more strongly correlated with body mass. While the tibia exhibits shape variation both linked with phylogeny and body mass, the fibula displays the greatest intraspecific variation. We highlight three distinct morphotypes of bone shape, which appear in accordance with the phylogeny. The influence of body mass also appears unequally expressed on the different bones. Body mass increase among the five extant species is marked by an increase of the general robustness, more pronounced attachments for muscles and a development of medial parts of the bones. Our study underlines that the morphological features linked to body mass increase are not similar between rhinos and other heavy mammals such as elephants and hippos, suggesting that the weight bearing constraint can lead to different morphological responses. PeerJ Inc. 2019-09-26 /pmc/articles/PMC6766374/ /pubmed/31579585 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7647 Text en © 2019 Mallet et al. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Evolutionary Studies
Mallet, Christophe
Cornette, Raphaël
Billet, Guillaume
Houssaye, Alexandra
Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title_full Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title_fullStr Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title_full_unstemmed Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title_short Interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
title_sort interspecific variation in the limb long bones among modern rhinoceroses—extent and drivers
topic Evolutionary Studies
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6766374/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31579585
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.7647
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