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Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication

Megafaunal extinctions are recurring events that cause evolutionary ripples, as cascades of secondary extinctions and shifting selective pressures reshape ecosystems. Megafaunal browsers and grazers are major ecosystem engineers, they: keep woody vegetation suppressed; are nitrogen cyclers; and serv...

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Autores principales: Spengler, Robert N., Petraglia, Michael, Roberts, Patrick, Ashastina, Kseniia, Kistler, Logan, Mueller, Natalie G., Boivin, Nicole
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33841476
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.649394
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author Spengler, Robert N.
Petraglia, Michael
Roberts, Patrick
Ashastina, Kseniia
Kistler, Logan
Mueller, Natalie G.
Boivin, Nicole
author_facet Spengler, Robert N.
Petraglia, Michael
Roberts, Patrick
Ashastina, Kseniia
Kistler, Logan
Mueller, Natalie G.
Boivin, Nicole
author_sort Spengler, Robert N.
collection PubMed
description Megafaunal extinctions are recurring events that cause evolutionary ripples, as cascades of secondary extinctions and shifting selective pressures reshape ecosystems. Megafaunal browsers and grazers are major ecosystem engineers, they: keep woody vegetation suppressed; are nitrogen cyclers; and serve as seed dispersers. Most angiosperms possess sets of physiological traits that allow for the fixation of mutualisms with megafauna; some of these traits appear to serve as exaptation (preadaptation) features for farming. As an easily recognized example, fleshy fruits are, an exaptation to agriculture, as they evolved to recruit a non-human disperser. We hypothesize that the traits of rapid annual growth, self-compatibility, heavy investment in reproduction, high plasticity (wide reaction norms), and rapid evolvability were part of an adaptive syndrome for megafaunal seed dispersal. We review the evolutionary importance that megafauna had for crop and weed progenitors and discuss possible ramifications of their extinction on: (1) seed dispersal; (2) population dynamics; and (3) habitat loss. Humans replaced some of the ecological services that had been lost as a result of late Quaternary extinctions and drove rapid evolutionary change resulting in domestication.
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spelling pubmed-80246332021-04-08 Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication Spengler, Robert N. Petraglia, Michael Roberts, Patrick Ashastina, Kseniia Kistler, Logan Mueller, Natalie G. Boivin, Nicole Front Plant Sci Plant Science Megafaunal extinctions are recurring events that cause evolutionary ripples, as cascades of secondary extinctions and shifting selective pressures reshape ecosystems. Megafaunal browsers and grazers are major ecosystem engineers, they: keep woody vegetation suppressed; are nitrogen cyclers; and serve as seed dispersers. Most angiosperms possess sets of physiological traits that allow for the fixation of mutualisms with megafauna; some of these traits appear to serve as exaptation (preadaptation) features for farming. As an easily recognized example, fleshy fruits are, an exaptation to agriculture, as they evolved to recruit a non-human disperser. We hypothesize that the traits of rapid annual growth, self-compatibility, heavy investment in reproduction, high plasticity (wide reaction norms), and rapid evolvability were part of an adaptive syndrome for megafaunal seed dispersal. We review the evolutionary importance that megafauna had for crop and weed progenitors and discuss possible ramifications of their extinction on: (1) seed dispersal; (2) population dynamics; and (3) habitat loss. Humans replaced some of the ecological services that had been lost as a result of late Quaternary extinctions and drove rapid evolutionary change resulting in domestication. Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-03-24 /pmc/articles/PMC8024633/ /pubmed/33841476 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.649394 Text en Copyright © 2021 Spengler, Petraglia, Roberts, Ashastina, Kistler, Mueller and Boivin. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Plant Science
Spengler, Robert N.
Petraglia, Michael
Roberts, Patrick
Ashastina, Kseniia
Kistler, Logan
Mueller, Natalie G.
Boivin, Nicole
Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title_full Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title_fullStr Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title_full_unstemmed Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title_short Exaptation Traits for Megafaunal Mutualisms as a Factor in Plant Domestication
title_sort exaptation traits for megafaunal mutualisms as a factor in plant domestication
topic Plant Science
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8024633/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33841476
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2021.649394
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