IUCN / SSC Cat Specialist Group - Digital Cat Library |
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| Ely, R.C. | |
| Dietary ecomorphological dispersion and phenotypic integration in _Felidae_ and _Mustelidae_ (Mammalia; Carnivora) | |
| 2019 Full Book | |
Factors influencing greater dispersion in morphospace are a long-time interest of macroevolutionary studies, especially factors which act as constraints on adaptive exploration of morphospace. One potential factor, phenotypic integration, is often hypothesized as a constraint on the 'evolvability' of an organism, where less phenotypic integration results in rapid evolutionary responses to selective pressures. This hypothesis is tested by evaluating phenotypic integration and dietary ecomorphology in Mustelidae and Felidae. Felids are specialized to hypercarnivorous diets, while mustelids display a greater variety of dietary types. Therefore, mustelids are expected to display more modularity of cranial traits compared to felids which likely display higher degrees of cranial integration. A dietary ecomorphospace composed of three lower first molar diet indices was produced to calculate mean ecomorphospace distance (squared Euclidean distance) per species from the ecomorphospace centroid of each family or from a coordinate derived from ancestral state reconstruction. Using 2D geometric morphometrics of the cranial base, mean eigenvalue dispersion (SDrel(‰)) per species was calculated as an overall index of morphological integration. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and phylogenetic generalized least squares analyses (PGLS) were employed with SDrel(‰) as the explanatory variable and ecomorphospace distance as the response variable. No significant associations between cranial integration and ecomorphospace distance were detected in this work. The cranium may not be an appropriate proxy for integration, while the mammalian mandible may prove to be a more suitable component to test future hypotheses of integration. Additionally, incorporating more dietary indices based on dentition may serve to improve ecomorphological inference. |
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