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Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives

Darwin's finches are a classic example of adaptive radiation, a process by which multiple ecologically distinct species rapidly evolve from a single ancestor. Such evolutionary diversification is typically explained by adaptation to new ecological opportunities. However, the ecological diversif...

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Autores principales: Reaney, Ashley M., Bouchenak‐Khelladi, Yanis, Tobias, Joseph A., Abzhanov, Arkhat
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7771120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391699
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6994
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author Reaney, Ashley M.
Bouchenak‐Khelladi, Yanis
Tobias, Joseph A.
Abzhanov, Arkhat
author_facet Reaney, Ashley M.
Bouchenak‐Khelladi, Yanis
Tobias, Joseph A.
Abzhanov, Arkhat
author_sort Reaney, Ashley M.
collection PubMed
description Darwin's finches are a classic example of adaptive radiation, a process by which multiple ecologically distinct species rapidly evolve from a single ancestor. Such evolutionary diversification is typically explained by adaptation to new ecological opportunities. However, the ecological diversification of Darwin's finches following their dispersal to Galápagos was not matched on the same archipelago by other lineages of colonizing land birds, which diversified very little in terms of both species number and morphology. To better understand the causes underlying the extraordinary variation in Darwin's finches, we analyze the evolutionary dynamics of speciation and trait diversification in Thraupidae, including Coerebinae (Darwin's finches and relatives) and, their closely related clade, Sporophilinae. For all traits, we observe an early pulse of speciation and morphological diversification followed by prolonged periods of slower steady‐state rates of change. The primary exception is the apparent recent increase in diversification rate in Darwin's finches coupled with highly variable beak morphology, a potential key factor explaining this adaptive radiation. Our observations illustrate how the exploitation of ecological opportunity by contrasting means can produce clades with similarly high diversification rate yet strikingly different degrees of ecological and morphological differentiation.
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spelling pubmed-77711202020-12-31 Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives Reaney, Ashley M. Bouchenak‐Khelladi, Yanis Tobias, Joseph A. Abzhanov, Arkhat Ecol Evol Original Research Darwin's finches are a classic example of adaptive radiation, a process by which multiple ecologically distinct species rapidly evolve from a single ancestor. Such evolutionary diversification is typically explained by adaptation to new ecological opportunities. However, the ecological diversification of Darwin's finches following their dispersal to Galápagos was not matched on the same archipelago by other lineages of colonizing land birds, which diversified very little in terms of both species number and morphology. To better understand the causes underlying the extraordinary variation in Darwin's finches, we analyze the evolutionary dynamics of speciation and trait diversification in Thraupidae, including Coerebinae (Darwin's finches and relatives) and, their closely related clade, Sporophilinae. For all traits, we observe an early pulse of speciation and morphological diversification followed by prolonged periods of slower steady‐state rates of change. The primary exception is the apparent recent increase in diversification rate in Darwin's finches coupled with highly variable beak morphology, a potential key factor explaining this adaptive radiation. Our observations illustrate how the exploitation of ecological opportunity by contrasting means can produce clades with similarly high diversification rate yet strikingly different degrees of ecological and morphological differentiation. John Wiley and Sons Inc. 2020-11-10 /pmc/articles/PMC7771120/ /pubmed/33391699 http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6994 Text en © 2020 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Research
Reaney, Ashley M.
Bouchenak‐Khelladi, Yanis
Tobias, Joseph A.
Abzhanov, Arkhat
Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title_full Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title_fullStr Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title_full_unstemmed Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title_short Ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in Darwin's finches and their relatives
title_sort ecological and morphological determinants of evolutionary diversification in darwin's finches and their relatives
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7771120/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33391699
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/ece3.6994
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