Australian rodents reveal conserved Cranial Evolutionary Allometry across 10 million years of murid evolution

Marcy, Ariel E.; Guillerme, Thomas; Sherratt, Emma; Rowe, Kevin C.; Phillips, Matthew J.; Weisbecker, Vera

doi:10.1101/2020.04.30.071308

Cited by 5 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 78 publications

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“…Following Radinsky 36 , who first tested for the occurrence of evolutionary allometry in the cranium of several mammalian clades, a small number of studies have since addressed the occurrence and strength of CREA within mammalian lineages. These investigations confirmed the validity of CREA within groups ranging from metatherians (e.g., wallabies and kangaroos belonging to the genus Macropus 37 ; opossums 38 , 39 to placentals (e.g., capuchins and squirrel monkeys, Australian rodents, pangolins, and many other clades belonging to all superorders of placental mammals 15 , 40 – 42 . Further confirmation was found in other vertebrate clades, such as birds of prey 43 and temnospondyl amphibians 44 .…”

Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Conical and sabertoothed cats as an exception to craniofacial evolutionary allometry

Tamagnini,

Michaud,

Meloro

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Among evolutionary trends shaping phenotypic diversity over macroevolutionary scales, CREA (CRaniofacial Evolutionary Allometry) describes a tendency, among closely related species, for the smaller-sized of the group to have proportionally shorter rostra and larger braincases. Here, we used a phylogenetically broad cranial dataset, 3D geometric morphometrics, and phylogenetic comparative methods to assess the validity and strength of CREA in extinct and living felids. To test for the influence of biomechanical constraints, we quantified the impact of relative canine height on cranial shape evolution. Our results provided support to CREA at the family level. Yet, whereas felines support the rule, big cats, like Pantherinae and Machairodontinae, conform weakly if not at all with CREA predictions. Our findings suggest that Machairodontinae constitute one of the first well-supported exceptions to this biological rule currently known, probably in response to the biomechanical demands and developmental changes linked with their peculiar rostral adaptations. Our results suggest that the acquisition of extreme features concerning biomechanics, evo-devo constraints, and/or ecology is likely to be associated with peculiar patterns of morphological evolution, determining potential exceptions to common biological rules, for instance, by inducing variations in common patterns of evolutionary integration due to heterochronic changes under ratchet-like evolution.

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Section: Introductionsupporting

confidence: 63%

Conical and sabertoothed cats as an exception to craniofacial evolutionary allometry

Tamagnini,

Michaud,

Meloro

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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Geometric differences between the crania of Australian hopping mice (

Alhajeri¹

2021

Aust. Mammal.

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Half of the ten Australian hopping mice (Notomys) species have become extinct following the European colonisation of Australia, and most of the rest are threatened. This makes the study of their present diversity paramount. Although recent molecular phylogenies improved our understanding of the relationships among the species, detailed interspecific phenotypic comparisons are still lacking. This is the aim of the present study. Geometric morphometric methods were used to compare the crania of all five extant species (N. alexis, N. aquillo, N. cervinus, N. fuscus, and N. mitchellii) along with the extinct N. longicaudatus. Although previous work (based on traditional approaches) find intragenerically conserved crania, the present study discovers significant differences in cranial size and shape among Notomys species, with the ventral view being more distinct than the dorsal view. There was no evidence of sexual dimorphism in cranial size nor shape, and only a weak allometric effect. Most aspects of cranial shape differed among the species. The extant species pair that differed in cranial shape the most was N. aquilo – N. cervinus, differing in the foramen magnum, tympanic bulla, orbit, incisive foramen, and rostrum, along with cranial width, potentially a consequence of N. cervinus’ phylogenetic position, and N. aquilo’s s ecological uniqueness.

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ALPACA: a fast and accurate approach for automated landmarking of three-dimensional biological structures

Porto¹,

Rolfe

Maga

2020

Preprint

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Landmark-based geometric morphometrics has emerged as an essential discipline for the quantitative analysis of size and shape in ecology and evolution. With the ever-increasing density of digitized landmarks, the possible development of a fully automated method of landmark placement has attracted considerable attention. Despite the recent progress in image registration techniques, which could provide a pathway to automation, three-dimensional morphometric data is still mainly gathered by trained experts. For the most part, the large infrastructure requirements necessary to perform image-based registration, together with its system-specificity and its overall speed have prevented wide dissemination.Here, we propose and implement a general and lightweight point cloud-based approach to automatically collect highdimensional landmark data in 3D surfaces (Automated Landmarking through Point cloud Alignment and Correspondence Analysis). Our framework possesses several advantages compared with image-based approaches. First, it presents comparable landmarking accuracy, despite relying on a single, random reference specimen and much sparser sampling of the structure’s surface. Second, it is performant such that it can be efficiently run on consumer-grade personal computers. Finally, it is general and can be applied to any biological structure of interest, regardless of whether anatomical atlases are available.Our validation procedures indicate that the method is capable of recovering multivariate patterns of morphological variation that are largely indistinguishable from those obtained by manual digitization, indicating that the use of an automated landmarking approach should not result in different conclusions regarding the nature of multivariate patterns of morphological variation.The proposed point cloud-based approach has the potential to increase the scale and reproducibility of morphometrics research. To allow ALPACA to be used out-of-the-box by users with no prior programming experience, we implemented it as a module as part of the SlicerMorph project. SlicerMorph is an extension that enables geometric morphometrics data collection and 3D specimen analysis within the open-source 3D Slicer biomedical visualization ecosystem. We expect that convenient access to this platform will make ALPACA broadly applicable within ecology and evolution.

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Australian rodents reveal conserved Cranial Evolutionary Allometry across 10 million years of murid evolution

Cited by 5 publications

References 78 publications

Conical and sabertoothed cats as an exception to craniofacial evolutionary allometry

Conical and sabertoothed cats as an exception to craniofacial evolutionary allometry

Geometric differences between the crania of Australian hopping mice (

ALPACA: a fast and accurate approach for automated landmarking of three-dimensional biological structures

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