1
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Mainwaring MC, Medina I, Tobalske BW, Hartley IR, Varricchio DJ, Hauber ME. The evolution of nest site use and nest architecture in modern birds and their ancestors. Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci 2023; 378:20220143. [PMID: 37427466 PMCID: PMC10331912 DOI: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0143] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/13/2023] [Accepted: 05/19/2023] [Indexed: 07/11/2023] Open
Abstract
The evolution of nest site use and nest architecture in the non-avian ancestors of birds remains poorly understood because nest structures do not preserve well as fossils. Nevertheless, the evidence suggests that the earliest dinosaurs probably buried eggs below ground and covered them with soil so that heat from the substrate fuelled embryo development, while some later dinosaurs laid partially exposed clutches where adults incubated them and protected them from predators and parasites. The nests of euornithine birds-the precursors to modern birds-were probably partially open and the neornithine birds-or modern birds-were probably the first to build fully exposed nests. The shift towards smaller, open cup nests has been accompanied by shifts in reproductive traits, with female birds having one functioning ovary in contrast to the two ovaries of crocodilians and many non-avian dinosaurs. The evolutionary trend among extant birds and their ancestors has been toward the evolution of greater cognitive abilities to construct in a wider diversity of sites and providing more care for significantly fewer, increasingly altricial, offspring. The highly derived passerines reflect this pattern with many species building small, architecturally complex nests in open sites and investing significant care into altricial young. This article is part of the theme issue 'The evolutionary ecology of nests: a cross-taxon approach'.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Iliana Medina
- School of BioSciences, University of Melbourne, Melbourne VIC 3010, Australia
| | - Bret W. Tobalske
- Field Research Station at Fort Missoula, Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, MT 59802, USA
| | - Ian R. Hartley
- Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK
| | - David J. Varricchio
- Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT 59717, USA
| | - Mark E. Hauber
- Department of Evolution, Ecology, and Behavior, School of Integrative Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA
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2
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Miller CV, Pittman M, Wang X, Zheng X, Bright JA. Quantitative investigation of pengornithid enantiornithine diet reveals macrocarnivorous ecology evolved in birds by Early Cretaceous. iScience 2023; 26:106211. [PMID: 36923002 PMCID: PMC10009206 DOI: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.106211] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/10/2022] [Revised: 01/12/2023] [Accepted: 02/13/2023] [Indexed: 02/18/2023] Open
Abstract
The diet of Mesozoic birds is poorly known, limiting evolutionary understanding of birds' roles in modern ecosystems. Pengornithidae is one of the best understood families of Mesozoic birds, hypothesized to eat insects or only small amounts of meat. We investigate these hypotheses with four lines of evidence: estimated body mass, claw traditional morphometrics, jaw mechanical advantage, and jaw finite element analysis. Owing to limited data, the diets of Eopengornis and Chiappeavis remain obscure. Pengornis, Parapengornis, and Yuanchuavis show adaptations for vertebrate carnivory. Pengornis also has talons similar to living raptorial birds like caracaras that capture and kill large prey, which represents the earliest known adaptation for macrocarnivory in a bird. This supports the appearance of this ecology ∼35 million years earlier than previously thought. These findings greatly increase the niche breadth known for Early Cretaceous birds, and shift the prevailing view that Mesozoic birds mainly occupied low trophic levels.
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Affiliation(s)
- Case Vincent Miller
- Department of Earth Sciences, the University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Michael Pittman
- School of Life Sciences, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong SAR, China
| | - Xiaoli Wang
- Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi, Shandong 276005, China.,Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, Pingyi, Shandong 273300, China
| | - Xiaoting Zheng
- Institute of Geology and Paleontology, Linyi University, Linyi, Shandong 276005, China.,Shandong Tianyu Museum of Nature, Pingyi, Shandong 273300, China
| | - Jen A Bright
- Department of Biological and Marine Sciences, University of Hull, Hull HU6 7RX, UK
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3
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Wang R, Hu D, Zhang M, Wang S, Zhao Q, Sullivan C, Xu X. A new confuciusornithid bird with a secondary epiphyseal ossification reveals phylogenetic changes in confuciusornithid flight mode. Commun Biol 2022; 5:1398. [PMID: 36543908 PMCID: PMC9772404 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-022-04316-6] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/01/2022] [Accepted: 11/29/2022] [Indexed: 12/24/2022] Open
Abstract
The confuciusornithids are the earliest known beaked birds, and constitute the only species-rich clade of Early Cretaceous pygostylian birds that existed prior to the cladogenesis of Ornithothoraces. Here, we report a new confuciusornithid species from the Lower Cretaceous of western Liaoning, northeastern China. Compared to other confuciusornithids, this new species and the recently reported Yangavis confucii both show evidence of stronger flight capability, although the wings of the two taxa differ from one another in many respects. Our aerodynamic analyses under phylogeny indicate that varying modes of flight adaptation emerged across the diversity of confuciusornithids, and to a lesser degree over the course of their ontogeny, and specifically suggest that both a trend towards improved flight capability and a change in flight strategy occurred in confuciusornithid evolution. The new confuciusornithid differs most saliently from other Mesozoic birds in having an extra cushion-like bone in the first digit of the wing, a highly unusual feature that may have helped to meet the functional demands of flight at a stage when skeletal growth was still incomplete. The new find strikingly exemplifies the morphological, developmental and functional diversity of the first beaked birds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Renfei Wang
- grid.64924.3d0000 0004 1760 5735College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China ,grid.263484.f0000 0004 1759 8467Shenyang Normal University, Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, Key Laboratory for Evolution of Past Life in Northeast Asia, Liaoning Province, Shenyang, China
| | - Dongyu Hu
- grid.263484.f0000 0004 1759 8467Shenyang Normal University, Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, Key Laboratory for Evolution of Past Life in Northeast Asia, Liaoning Province, Shenyang, China
| | - Meisheng Zhang
- grid.64924.3d0000 0004 1760 5735College of Earth Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun, China
| | - Shiying Wang
- grid.263484.f0000 0004 1759 8467Shenyang Normal University, Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, Key Laboratory for Evolution of Past Life in Northeast Asia, Liaoning Province, Shenyang, China
| | - Qi Zhao
- grid.458456.e0000 0000 9404 3263Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
| | - Corwin Sullivan
- grid.17089.370000 0001 2190 316XDepartment of Biological Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB Canada ,Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum, Wembley, AB Canada
| | - Xing Xu
- grid.263484.f0000 0004 1759 8467Shenyang Normal University, Paleontological Museum of Liaoning, Key Laboratory for Evolution of Past Life in Northeast Asia, Liaoning Province, Shenyang, China ,grid.458456.e0000 0000 9404 3263Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China ,grid.440773.30000 0000 9342 2456Center for Vertebrate Evolutionary Biology, Yunnan University, Kunming, China
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4
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Griffin CT, Botelho JF, Hanson M, Fabbri M, Smith-Paredes D, Carney RM, Norell MA, Egawa S, Gatesy SM, Rowe TB, Elsey RM, Nesbitt SJ, Bhullar BAS. The developing bird pelvis passes through ancestral dinosaurian conditions. Nature 2022; 608:346-352. [PMID: 35896745 DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-04982-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/08/2021] [Accepted: 06/15/2022] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Abstract
Living birds (Aves) have bodies substantially modified from the ancestral reptilian condition. The avian pelvis in particular experienced major changes during the transition from early archosaurs to living birds1,2. This stepwise transformation is well documented by an excellent fossil record2-4; however, the ontogenetic alterations that underly it are less well understood. We used embryological imaging techniques to examine the morphogenesis of avian pelvic tissues in three dimensions, allowing direct comparison with the fossil record. Many ancestral dinosaurian features2 (for example, a forward-facing pubis, short ilium and pubic 'boot') are transiently present in the early morphogenesis of birds and arrive at their typical 'avian' form after transitioning through a prenatal developmental sequence that mirrors the phylogenetic sequence of character acquisition. We demonstrate quantitatively that avian pelvic ontogeny parallels the non-avian dinosaur-to-bird transition and provide evidence for phenotypic covariance within the pelvis that is conserved across Archosauria. The presence of ancestral states in avian embryos may stem from this conserved covariant relationship. In sum, our data provide evidence that the avian pelvis, whose early development has been little studied5-7, evolved through terminal addition-a mechanism8-10 whereby new apomorphic states are added to the end of a developmental sequence, resulting in expression8,11 of ancestral character states earlier in that sequence. The phenotypic integration we detected suggests a previously unrecognized mechanism for terminal addition and hints that retention of ancestral states in development is common during evolutionary transitions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Christopher T Griffin
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Department of Geosciences, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA
| | - João F Botelho
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Departamento Biología Celular y Molecular, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
| | - Michael Hanson
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Matteo Fabbri
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Nagaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA
| | - Daniel Smith-Paredes
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
| | - Ryan M Carney
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA
| | - Mark A Norell
- Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA
| | - Shiro Egawa
- RIKEN Center for Biosystems Dynamics Research, Kobe, Japan
| | - Stephen M Gatesy
- Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA
| | - Timothy B Rowe
- Jackson School of Geosciences, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Ruth M Elsey
- Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Grand Chenier, LA, USA
| | | | - Bhart-Anjan S Bhullar
- Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
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5
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Benito J, Chen A, Wilson LE, Bhullar BAS, Burnham D, Field DJ. Forty new specimens of Ichthyornis provide unprecedented insight into the postcranial morphology of crownward stem group birds. PeerJ 2022; 10:e13919. [PMID: 36545383 PMCID: PMC9762251 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.13919] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/13/2021] [Accepted: 07/28/2022] [Indexed: 12/23/2022] Open
Abstract
Ichthyornis has long been recognized as a pivotally important fossil taxon for understanding the latest stages of the dinosaur-bird transition, but little significant new postcranial material has been brought to light since initial descriptions of partial skeletons in the 19th Century. Here, we present new information on the postcranial morphology of Ichthyornis from 40 previously undescribed specimens, providing the most complete morphological assessment of the postcranial skeleton of Ichthyornis to date. The new material includes four partially complete skeletons and numerous well-preserved isolated elements, enabling new anatomical observations such as muscle attachments previously undescribed for Mesozoic euornitheans. Among the elements that were previously unknown or poorly represented for Ichthyornis, the new specimens include an almost-complete axial series, a hypocleideum-bearing furcula, radial carpal bones, fibulae, a complete tarsometatarsus bearing a rudimentary hypotarsus, and one of the first-known nearly complete three-dimensional sterna from a Mesozoic avialan. Several pedal phalanges are preserved, revealing a remarkably enlarged pes presumably related to foot-propelled swimming. Although diagnosable as Ichthyornis, the new specimens exhibit a substantial degree of morphological variation, some of which may relate to ontogenetic changes. Phylogenetic analyses incorporating our new data and employing alternative morphological datasets recover Ichthyornis stemward of Hesperornithes and Iaceornis, in line with some recent hypotheses regarding the topology of the crownward-most portion of the avian stem group, and we establish phylogenetically-defined clade names for relevant avialan subclades to help facilitate consistent discourse in future work. The new information provided by these specimens improves our understanding of morphological evolution among the crownward-most non-neornithine avialans immediately preceding the origin of crown group birds.
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Affiliation(s)
- Juan Benito
- Department of Biology & Biochemistry, Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom.,Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
| | - Albert Chen
- Department of Biology & Biochemistry, Milner Centre for Evolution, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom.,Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom
| | - Laura E Wilson
- Fort Hays State University, Sternberg Museum of Natural History and Department of Geosciences, Hays, Kansas, United States
| | - Bhart-Anjan S Bhullar
- Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, New Haven, Conneticut, United States.,Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, Yale University, New Haven, Conneticut, United States
| | - David Burnham
- University of Kansas, Biodiversity Institute and Natural History Museum, Lawrence, Kansas, United States
| | - Daniel J Field
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom.,University Museum of Zoology, Cambridge, United Kingdom
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6
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Miller CV, Pittman M. The diet of early birds based on modern and fossil evidence and a new framework for its reconstruction. Biol Rev Camb Philos Soc 2021; 96:2058-2112. [PMID: 34240530 PMCID: PMC8519158 DOI: 10.1111/brv.12743] [Citation(s) in RCA: 16] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/07/2020] [Revised: 05/07/2021] [Accepted: 05/10/2021] [Indexed: 12/14/2022]
Abstract
Birds are some of the most diverse organisms on Earth, with species inhabiting a wide variety of niches across every major biome. As such, birds are vital to our understanding of modern ecosystems. Unfortunately, our understanding of the evolutionary history of modern ecosystems is hampered by knowledge gaps in the origin of modern bird diversity and ecosystem ecology. A crucial part of addressing these shortcomings is improving our understanding of the earliest birds, the non-avian avialans (i.e. non-crown birds), particularly of their diet. The diet of non-avian avialans has been a matter of debate, in large part because of the ambiguous qualitative approaches that have been used to reconstruct it. Here we review methods for determining diet in modern and fossil avians (i.e. crown birds) as well as non-avian theropods, and comment on their usefulness when applied to non-avian avialans. We use this to propose a set of comparable, quantitative approaches to ascertain fossil bird diet and on this basis provide a consensus of what we currently know about fossil bird diet. While no single approach can precisely predict diet in birds, each can exclude some diets and narrow the dietary possibilities. We recommend combining (i) dental microwear, (ii) landmark-based muscular reconstruction, (iii) stable isotope geochemistry, (iv) body mass estimations, (v) traditional and/or geometric morphometric analysis, (vi) lever modelling, and (vii) finite element analysis to reconstruct fossil bird diet accurately. Our review provides specific methodologies to implement each approach and discusses complications future researchers should keep in mind. We note that current forms of assessment of dental mesowear, skull traditional morphometrics, geometric morphometrics, and certain stable isotope systems have yet to be proven effective at discerning fossil bird diet. On this basis we report the current state of knowledge of non-avian avialan diet which remains very incomplete. The ancestral dietary condition in non-avian avialans remains unclear due to scarce data and contradictory evidence in Archaeopteryx. Among early non-avian pygostylians, Confuciusornis has finite element analysis and mechanical advantage evidence pointing to herbivory, whilst Sapeornis only has mechanical advantage evidence indicating granivory, agreeing with fossilised ingested material known for this taxon. The enantiornithine ornithothoracine Shenqiornis has mechanical advantage and pedal morphometric evidence pointing to carnivory. In the hongshanornithid ornithuromorph Hongshanornis only mechanical advantage evidence indicates granivory, but this agrees with evidence of gastrolith ingestion in this taxon. Mechanical advantage and ingested fish support carnivory in the songlingornithid ornithuromorph Yanornis. Due to the sparsity of robust dietary assignments, no clear trends in non-avian avialan dietary evolution have yet emerged. Dietary diversity seems to increase through time, but this is a preservational bias associated with a predominance of data from the Early Cretaceous Jehol Lagerstätte. With this new framework and our synthesis of the current knowledge of non-avian avialan diet, we expect dietary knowledge and evolutionary trends to become much clearer in the coming years, especially as fossils from other locations and climates are found. This will allow for a deeper and more robust understanding of the role birds played in Mesozoic ecosystems and how this developed into their pivotal role in modern ecosystems.
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Affiliation(s)
- Case Vincent Miller
- Vertebrate Palaeontology Laboratory, Research Division for Earth and Planetary ScienceThe University of Hong KongPokfulamHong Kong SARChina
| | - Michael Pittman
- Vertebrate Palaeontology Laboratory, Research Division for Earth and Planetary ScienceThe University of Hong KongPokfulamHong Kong SARChina
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7
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Wu Y. Molecular phyloecology suggests a trophic shift concurrent with the evolution of the first birds. Commun Biol 2021; 4:547. [PMID: 33986452 PMCID: PMC8119460 DOI: 10.1038/s42003-021-02067-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/18/2020] [Accepted: 03/31/2021] [Indexed: 02/03/2023] Open
Abstract
Birds are characterized by evolutionary specializations of both locomotion (e.g., flapping flight) and digestive system (toothless, crop, and gizzard), while the potential selection pressures responsible for these evolutionary specializations remain unclear. Here we used a recently developed molecular phyloecological method to reconstruct the diets of the ancestral archosaur and of the common ancestor of living birds (CALB). Our results suggest a trophic shift from carnivory to herbivory (fruit, seed, and/or nut eater) at the archosaur-to-bird transition. The evolutionary shift of the CALB to herbivory may have essentially made them become a low-level consumer and, consequently, subject to relatively high predation risk from potential predators such as gliding non-avian maniraptorans, from which birds descended. Under the relatively high predation pressure, ancestral birds with gliding capability may have then evolved not only flapping flight as a possible anti-predator strategy against gliding predatory non-avian maniraptorans but also the specialized digestive system as an evolutionary tradeoff of maximizing foraging efficiency and minimizing predation risk. Our results suggest that the powered flight and specialized digestive system of birds may have evolved as a result of their tropic shift-associated predation pressure.
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Affiliation(s)
- Yonghua Wu
- School of Life Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
- Jilin Provincial Key Laboratory of Animal Resource Conservation and Utilization, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, China.
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8
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Legendre LJ, Clarke JA. Shifts in eggshell thickness are related to changes in locomotor ecology in dinosaurs. Evolution 2021; 75:1415-1430. [PMID: 33913155 DOI: 10.1111/evo.14245] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/07/2020] [Revised: 03/13/2021] [Accepted: 04/21/2021] [Indexed: 12/16/2022]
Abstract
Birds share an array of unique characteristics among extant land vertebrates. Among these, external and microstructural characteristics of extant bird eggs have been linked to changes in reproductive strategy that arose among non-avian theropod dinosaurs. More recently, differences in egg proportions recovered in crown birds relative to other dinosaurs were suggested as possibly linked to avian flight, but dense sampling close to its proposed origin was lacking. Here we assess the evolution of eggshell thickness in a targeted sample of 114 dinosaurs including birds, and test the relationship of eggshell thickness with potential life history correlates and locomotor mode using phylogenetic comparative methods. Only egg mass and flight are identified as significant predictors of eggshell thickness. While a high correlation between egg mass and eggshell thickness is expected, that relationship is much stronger in flying taxa, which show a significantly higher slope and lower residual variance than flightless species. This suggests stabilizing selection of eggshell thickness among theropods, as recovered for other traits in extant birds (e.g. genome size, metabolic rate). Within living birds, Eufalconimorphae present an apomorphic increase in relative eggshell thickness which remains unexplained, as few morphological synapomorphies of this clade have been identified.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lucas J Legendre
- Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
| | - Julia A Clarke
- Department of Geological Sciences, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA
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9
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Nagy J, Hauber ME, Hartley IR, Mainwaring MC. Correlated evolution of nest and egg characteristics in birds. Anim Behav 2019. [DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.10.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 19] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/07/2023]
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10
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Charles Deeming D, Mayr G. Pelvis morphology suggests that early Mesozoic birds were too heavy to contact incubate their eggs. J Evol Biol 2018; 31:701-709. [DOI: 10.1111/jeb.13256] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/19/2017] [Accepted: 02/14/2018] [Indexed: 10/17/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- D. Charles Deeming
- Joseph Banks Laboratories School of Life Sciences University of Lincoln Lincoln UK
| | - Gerald Mayr
- Ornithological Section Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main Germany
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11
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Zhao T, Liu D, Li Z. Correlated evolution of sternal keel length and ilium length in birds. PeerJ 2017; 5:e3622. [PMID: 28761797 PMCID: PMC5533152 DOI: 10.7717/peerj.3622] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/20/2017] [Accepted: 07/07/2017] [Indexed: 11/29/2022] Open
Abstract
The interplay between the pectoral module (the pectoral girdle and limbs) and the pelvic module (the pelvic girdle and limbs) plays a key role in shaping avian evolution, but prior empirical studies on trait covariation between the two modules are limited. Here we empirically test whether (size-corrected) sternal keel length and ilium length are correlated during avian evolution using phylogenetic comparative methods. Our analyses on extant birds and Mesozoic birds both recover a significantly positive correlation. The results provide new evidence regarding the integration between the pelvic and pectoral modules. The correlated evolution of sternal keel length and ilium length may serve as a mechanism to cope with the effect on performance caused by a tradeoff in muscle mass between the pectoral and pelvic modules, via changing moment arms of muscles that function in flight and in terrestrial locomotion.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tao Zhao
- School of Earth Sciences and Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China
| | - Di Liu
- University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.,Beijing Museum of Natural History, Beijing, China
| | - Zhiheng Li
- Key Laboratory of Vertebrate Evolution and Human Origins of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
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