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Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column
A fundamental concept in evolutionary biology is that life tends to become more complex through geologic time, but empirical examples of this phenomenon are controversial. One debate is whether increasing complexity is the result of random variations, or if there are evolutionary processes which act...
Autores principales: | , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Nature Publishing Group UK
2019
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6838112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31699978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13026-3 |
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author | Jones, Katrina E. Angielczyk, Kenneth D. Pierce, Stephanie E. |
author_facet | Jones, Katrina E. Angielczyk, Kenneth D. Pierce, Stephanie E. |
author_sort | Jones, Katrina E. |
collection | PubMed |
description | A fundamental concept in evolutionary biology is that life tends to become more complex through geologic time, but empirical examples of this phenomenon are controversial. One debate is whether increasing complexity is the result of random variations, or if there are evolutionary processes which actively drive its acquisition, and if these processes act uniformly across clades. The mammalian vertebral column provides an opportunity to test these hypotheses because it is composed of serially-repeating vertebrae for which complexity can be readily measured. Here we test seven competing hypotheses for the evolution of vertebral complexity by incorporating fossil data from the mammal stem lineage into evolutionary models. Based on these data, we reject Brownian motion (a random walk) and uniform increasing trends in favor of stepwise shifts for explaining increasing complexity. We hypothesize that increased aerobic capacity in non-mammalian cynodonts may have provided impetus for increasing vertebral complexity in mammals. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-6838112 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2019 |
publisher | Nature Publishing Group UK |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-68381122019-11-12 Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column Jones, Katrina E. Angielczyk, Kenneth D. Pierce, Stephanie E. Nat Commun Article A fundamental concept in evolutionary biology is that life tends to become more complex through geologic time, but empirical examples of this phenomenon are controversial. One debate is whether increasing complexity is the result of random variations, or if there are evolutionary processes which actively drive its acquisition, and if these processes act uniformly across clades. The mammalian vertebral column provides an opportunity to test these hypotheses because it is composed of serially-repeating vertebrae for which complexity can be readily measured. Here we test seven competing hypotheses for the evolution of vertebral complexity by incorporating fossil data from the mammal stem lineage into evolutionary models. Based on these data, we reject Brownian motion (a random walk) and uniform increasing trends in favor of stepwise shifts for explaining increasing complexity. We hypothesize that increased aerobic capacity in non-mammalian cynodonts may have provided impetus for increasing vertebral complexity in mammals. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6838112/ /pubmed/31699978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13026-3 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
spellingShingle | Article Jones, Katrina E. Angielczyk, Kenneth D. Pierce, Stephanie E. Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title | Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title_full | Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title_fullStr | Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title_full_unstemmed | Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title_short | Stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
title_sort | stepwise shifts underlie evolutionary trends in morphological complexity of the mammalian vertebral column |
topic | Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6838112/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31699978 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13026-3 |
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