Relationships of diversity, disparity, and their evolutionary rates in squirrels (Sciuridae)

2015/03/18 by Miriam Leah Zelditch, Miriam L. Zelditch, Jingchun Li +2 · 22 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Animal Ecology and Behavior Studies #Genetic diversity and population structure

paper · doi:10.1111/evo.12642

Abstract

Several theories predict that rapidly diversifying clades will also rapidly diverge phenotypically; yet, there are also reasons for suspecting that diversification and divergence might not be correlated. In the widely distributed squirrel clade (Sciuridae), we test for correlations between per lineage speciation rates, species richness, disparity, and a time-invariant measure of disparity that allows for comparing rates when evolutionary modes differ, as they do in squirrels. We find that species richness and speciation rates are not correlated with clade age or with each other. Disparity appears to be positively correlated with clade age because young, rapidly diversifying Nearctic grassland clades are strongly pulled to a single stable optimum but older, slowly diversifying Paleotropical forest clades contain lineages that diverge along multiple ecological and morphological lines. That contrast is likely due to both the environments they inhabit and their phylogenetic community structure. Our results argue against a shared explanation for diversity and disparity in favor of geographically mediated modes of speciation and ecologically mediated modes of phenotypic evolution.

Citations

• ECOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY AND THE RATE OF MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION IN THE DIVERSIFICATION OF GREATER ANTILLEAN ANOLES
• RATES OF MORPHOLOGICAL EVOLUTION ARE CORRELATED WITH SPECIES RICHNESS IN SALAMANDERS
• Clade Age and Not Diversification Rate Explains Species Richness among Animal Taxa
• A METHOD FOR ASSESSING PHYLOGENETIC LEAST SQUARES MODELS FOR SHAPE AND OTHER HIGH-DIMENSIONAL MULTIVARIATE DATA
• Homage to Santa Rosalia or Why Are There So Many Kinds of Animals?
• Are rates of species diversification correlated with rates of morphological evolution?
• A Conceptual and Statistical Framework for Adaptive Radiations with a Key Role for Diversity Dependence
• TESTING FOR DIFFERENT RATES OF CONTINUOUS TRAIT EVOLUTION USING LIKELIHOOD

Cited by

• Song evolution, speciation, and vocal learning in passerine birds
• The ecology of a continental evolutionary radiation: Is the radiation of sigmodontine rodents adaptive?
• Rare ecomorphological convergence on a complex adaptive landscape: Body size and diet mediate evolution of jaw shape in squirrels (Sciuridae)
• Decoupled diversity and disparity after faunistic turnover in caviomorph rodents
• Decoupled Patterns of Diversity and Disparity Characterize an Ecologically Specialized Lineage of Neotropical Cricetids
• Size is not everything: rates of genome size evolution, not<i>C</i>-value, correlate with speciation in angiosperms
• Size is not everything: rates of genome size evolution, not C-value, correlate with speciation in angiosperms. [europepmc]
• Absolute, not relative brain size correlates with sociality in ground squirrels. [europepmc]
• Rates of ecological divergence and body size evolution are correlated with species diversification in scaly tree ferns. [europepmc]
• Biodiversity and Topographic Complexity: Modern and Geohistorical Perspectives. [europepmc]
• Fast algorithms for computing phylogenetic divergence time. [europepmc]
• Trabecular architecture in the sciuromorph femoral head: allometry and functional adaptation. [europepmc]
• Weighing homoplasy against alternative scenarios with the help of macroevolutionary modeling: A case study on limb bones of fossorial sciuromorph rodents. [europepmc]
• Glacial cycles drive rapid divergence of cryptic field vole species. [europepmc]
• A draft genome assembly for the eastern fox squirrel, Sciurus niger. [europepmc]
• Incipient morphological specializations associated with fossorial life in the skull of ground squirrels (Sciuridae, Rodentia). [europepmc]
• Using pose estimation to identify regions and points on natural history specimens. [europepmc]
• Craniodental divergence associated with bite force between hybridizing pine squirrels (Tamiasciurus). [europepmc]
• The radiation continuum and the evolution of frog diversity. [europepmc]
• Inferring the locomotor ecology of two of the oldest fossil squirrels: influence of operationalization, trait, body size and machine learning method. [europepmc]
• Mitogenome of Endemic Species of Flying Squirrel, Trogopterus xanthipes (Rodentia, Mammalia) and Phylogeny of the Sciuridae. [europepmc]
• A Prelude to Conservation Genomics: First Chromosome-Level Genome Assembly of a Flying Squirrel (Pteromyini: Pteromys volans ). [europepmc]

Related

• Biome Specialisation in Squirrels: Phylogenetic and Geographic Patterns
• The Causes Of Species Richness Patterns Across Space, Time, And Clades And The Role Of “Ecological Limits”
• The nature and prevalence of diversification rate shifts across the Tree of Life
• Cranial morphology in flying squirrels: diet, shape, and size disparity across tropical and temperate biomes
• Rare ecomorphological convergence on a complex adaptive landscape: Body size and diet mediate evolution of jaw shape in squirrels (Sciuridae)