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Grossnickle DM, Brightly WH, Weaver LN, Stanchak KE, Roston RA, Pevsner SK, Stayton CT, Polly PD, Law CJ. Challenges and advances in measuring phenotypic convergence. Evolution 2024; 78:1355-1371. [PMID: 38771219 DOI: 10.1093/evolut/qpae081] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2023] [Revised: 05/13/2024] [Accepted: 05/20/2024] [Indexed: 05/22/2024]
Abstract
Tests of phenotypic convergence can provide evidence of adaptive evolution, and the popularity of such studies has grown in recent years due to the development of novel, quantitative methods for identifying and measuring convergence. These methods include the commonly applied C1-C4 measures of Stayton (2015a), which measure morphological distances between lineages, and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) model-fitting analyses, which test whether lineages converged on shared adaptive peaks. We test the performance of C-measures and other convergence measures under various evolutionary scenarios and reveal a critical issue with C-measures: they often misidentify divergent lineages as convergent. We address this issue by developing novel convergence measures-Ct1-Ct4-measures-that calculate distances between lineages at specific points in time, minimizing the possibility of misidentifying divergent taxa as convergent. Ct-measures are most appropriate when focal lineages are of the same or similar geologic ages (e.g., extant taxa), meaning that the lineages' evolutionary histories include considerable overlap in time. Beyond C-measures, we find that all convergence measures are influenced by the position of focal taxa in phenotypic space, with morphological outliers often statistically more likely to be measured as strongly convergent. Further, we mimic scenarios in which researchers assess convergence using OU models with a priori regime assignments (e.g., classifying taxa by ecological traits) and find that multiple-regime OU models with phenotypically divergent lineages assigned to a shared selective regime often outperform simpler models. This highlights that model support for these multiple-regime OU models should not be assumed to always reflect convergence among focal lineages of a shared regime. Our new Ct1-Ct4-measures provide researchers with an improved comparative tool, but we emphasize that all available convergence measures are imperfect, and researchers should recognize the limitations of these methods and use multiple lines of evidence to test convergence hypotheses.
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Affiliation(s)
- David M Grossnickle
- Natural Sciences Department, Oregon Institute of Technology, Klamath Falls, OR, United States
| | - William H Brightly
- School of Biosciences, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, United Kingdom
| | - Lucas N Weaver
- Museum of Paleontology and Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States
| | - Kathryn E Stanchak
- Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
| | - Rachel A Roston
- Center for Developmental Biology and Regenerative Medicine, Seattle Children's Research Institute, Seattle, WA, United States
| | - Spencer K Pevsner
- Department of Earth Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
| | - C Tristan Stayton
- Department of Biology, Bucknell University, Lewisburg, PA, United States
| | - P David Polly
- Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, United States
| | - Chris J Law
- Department of Biology, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
- Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States
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Segesdi M, Brabant D, Cornette R, Houssaye A. How does the shape of the wing and hindlimb bones of aquatic birds relate to their locomotor abilities? Anat Rec (Hoboken) 2024. [PMID: 38803316 DOI: 10.1002/ar.25512] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/20/2023] [Revised: 05/07/2024] [Accepted: 05/08/2024] [Indexed: 05/29/2024]
Abstract
Aquatic birds represent diverse ecologies and locomotion types. Some became flightless or lost the ability for effective terrestrial locomotion, yet, certain species excel in water, on land, and in air, despite differing physical characteristics associated with each medium. In this exploratory study, we intend to quantitatively analyze the morphological variety of multiple limb bones of aquatic birds using 3D geometric morphometrics. Morphological variation is mainly driven by phylogeny, which also affects size and locomotion. However, the shape of the ulna, including the proportion and orientation of the epiphyses is influenced by size and aquatic propulsive techniques even when phylogeny is taken into consideration. Certain trends, possibly linked to functions, can be observed too in other bones, notably in cases where phylogenetic and functional signals are probably mixed when some taxa only englobe species with similar functional requirements: penguins exhibit the most distinctive wing bone morphologies, highly adapted to wing-propulsion; advanced foot-propellers exhibit femur morphology that reduces proximal mobility but supports stability; knee structures, like cnemial crests of varied sizes and orientations, are crucial for muscle attachments and efficient movement in water and on land; taxa relying on their feet in water but retaining terrestrial abilities share features enabling swimming and walking postures. Size-linked changes distinguish the wing bones of non-wing-propelled taxa. For hindlimbs, larger size relates to robust bones probably linked to terrestrial abilities, but robustness in femora can be connected to foot-propulsion. These results help us better understand birds' skeletal adaptation and can be useful inferring extinct species' ecology.
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Affiliation(s)
- Martin Segesdi
- Department of Paleontology, ELTE Eötvös Loránd University, Institute of Geography and Earth Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Zoology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary
- Department of Paleontology and Geology, Hungarian Natural History Museum, Budapest, Hungary
| | - Delphine Brabant
- Plateforme Surfaçus, Délégation de l'Innovation Numérique, Direction générale déléguée aux collections, Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
| | - Raphaël Cornette
- Institut de Systématique, Evolution, Biodiversité (ISYEB), Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, EPHE, Université des Antilles, Paris, France
| | - Alexandra Houssaye
- Mécanismes adaptatifs et évolution (MECADEV), UMR 7179, MNHN, Paris, France
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Orkney A, Hedrick BP. Small body size is associated with increased evolutionary lability of wing skeleton proportions in birds. Nat Commun 2024; 15:4208. [PMID: 38806471 PMCID: PMC11133451 DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-48324-y] [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: 09/27/2023] [Accepted: 04/23/2024] [Indexed: 05/30/2024] Open
Abstract
Birds are represented by 11,000 species and a great variety of body masses. Modular organisation of trait evolution across birds has facilitated simultaneous adaptation of different body regions to divergent ecological requirements. However, the role modularity has played in avian body size evolution, especially small-bodied, rapidly evolving and diverse avian subclades, such as hummingbirds and songbirds, is unknown. Modularity is influenced by the intersection of biomechanical restrictions, adaptation, and developmental controls, making it difficult to uncover the contributions of single factors such as body mass to skeletal organisation. We develop a novel framework to decompose this complexity, assessing factors underlying the modularity of skeletal proportions in fore-limb propelled birds distributed across a range of body masses. We demonstrate that differences in body size across birds triggers a modular reorganisation of flight apparatus proportions consistent with biomechanical expectations. We suggest weakened integration within the wing facilitates radiation in small birds. Our framework is generalisable to other groups and has the capacity to untangle the multi-layered complexity intrinsic to modular evolution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Andrew Orkney
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University, 930 Campus Rd, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
| | - Brandon P Hedrick
- College of Veterinary Medicine, Department of Biomedical Sciences, Cornell University, 930 Campus Rd, Ithaca, NY, 14853, USA.
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Zheng K, Liang D, Wang X, Han Y, Griesser M, Liu Y, Fan P. Contrasting coloured ventral wings are a visual collision avoidance signal in birds. Proc Biol Sci 2022; 289:20220678. [PMID: 35858052 PMCID: PMC9257291 DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2022.0678] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/25/2022] Open
Abstract
Collisions between fast-moving objects often cause severe damage, but collision avoidance mechanisms of fast-moving animals remain understudied. Particularly, birds can fly fast and often in large groups, raising the question of how individuals avoid in-flight collisions that are potentially lethal. We tested the collision-avoidance hypothesis, which proposes that conspicuously contrasting ventral wings are visual signals that help birds to avoid collisions. We scored the ventral wing contrasts for a global dataset of 1780 bird species. Phylogenetic comparative analyses showed that larger species had more contrasting ventral wings than smaller species, and that in larger species, colonial breeders had more contrasting ventral wings than non-colonial breeders. Evidently, larger species have lower manoeuvrability than smaller species, and colonial-breeding species frequently encounter con- and heterospecifics, increasing their risk of in-flight collisions. Thus, more contrasting ventral wing patterns in these species are a sensory mechanism that facilitates collision avoidance.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kaidan Zheng
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Dan Liang
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China,Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
| | - Xuwen Wang
- Eli Lilly and Company, Indianapolis, IN 46225, USA
| | - Yuqing Han
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Michael Griesser
- Department of Biology, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany,Centre for the Advanced Study of Collective Behaviour, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany,Department of Collective Behavior, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, Konstanz, Germany
| | - Yang Liu
- School of Ecology, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, People's Republic of China,State Key Laboratory of Biological Control, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
| | - Pengfei Fan
- School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China,State Key Laboratory of Biological Control, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China
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Frank TM, Dodson P, Hedrick BP. Form and function in the avian pelvis. J Morphol 2022; 283:875-893. [DOI: 10.1002/jmor.21479] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/23/2021] [Revised: 03/08/2022] [Accepted: 04/16/2022] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Tanner M. Frank
- Department of Integrative Biology University of California‐Berkeley Berkeley California USA
| | - Peter Dodson
- Department of Biomedical Sciences, School of Veterinary Medicine University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA
- Department of Earth and Environmental Science, School of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia Pennsylvania USA
| | - Brandon P. Hedrick
- Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy School of Medicine, Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center New Orleans Los Angeles USA
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