Ben Creisler
Recent mammal papers that may be of interest:
Free pdf:
Luke R. Grinham (2020)
Functional diversity in morphologically similar sabre-toothed carnivores.
Communications Biology 3, Article number: 623
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-01361-x
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-01361-x
Sabre-toothed carnivores are among the most famed vertebrate fossils in the world. The sabre-tooth ecomorph has been converged upon repeatedly by distantly related species throughout mammalian evolution. Lautenschlager et al. employ a range of biomechanical analyses to investigate the functional diversity of sabre-toothed skulls. Across 66 species, broad functional diversity is recovered with implications for prey specialization and niche partitioning, despite being morphologically convergent.
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M. Michaud, G. Veron Â& A.âC. Fabre (2020)
Phenotypic integration in feliform carnivores: covariation patterns and disparity in hypercarnivores versus generalists.
Evolution (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/evo.14112
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/evo.14112
The skeleton is a complex arrangement of anatomical structures that covary to various degrees depending on both intrinsic and extrinsic factors. Among the Feliformia, many species are characterized by predator lifestyles providing a unique opportunity to investigate the impact of highly specialised hypercarnivorous diet on phenotypic integration and shape diversity. To do so, we compared the shape of the skull, mandible, humerus, and femur of species in relation to their feeding strategies (hypercarnivorous versus generalist species) and prey preference (predators of small versus large prey) using threeâdimensional geometric morphometric techniques. Our results highlight different degrees of morphological integration in the Feliformia depending on the functional implication of the anatomical structure, with an overall higher covariation of structures in hypercarnivorous species. The skull and the forelimb are not integrated in generalist species whereas they are in hypercarnivores. These results can potentially be explained by the different feeding strategies of these species. Contrary to our expectations, hypercarnivores display a higher disparity for the skull than generalist species. This is probably due to the fact that a specialisation toward highâmeat diet could be achieved through various phenotypes. Finally, humeri and femora display shape variations depending on relative prey size preference. Large species feeding on large prey tend to have robust long bones due to higher biomechanical constraints.
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