Animal Sciences Commons^™

Reproductive Traits And Change In Body Shape Of Neonates In The Oak Forest Skink, Plestiodon Lynxe, Manuel Feria-Ortiz, Uri Omar García-Vázquez, Carlos Joaquín Pavón-Vázquez, Adrián Nieto-Montes De Oca

Publications and Research

Reproductive traits are critically important for understanding how organisms adapt to their respective environments. In this study, we provide information on relative litter mass (RLM) and other litter and neonate related characters of nine female Plestiodon lynxe captured in the field. We also recorded seven body dimensions in 16 neonates and 15 two-month juveniles, and on the basis of these dimensions we compared the body shape of these two age classes to detect changes in the proportions of body parts. The average litter size (4.55) is larger than that found in other viviparous species of Plestiodon, but smaller than …

Forest Cover And Geographic Distance Influence Fine-Scale Genetic Structure Of Leaf-Toed Geckos In The Tropical Dry Forests Of Western Mexico, Connor M. French, Casey-Tyler Berezin, Isaac Overcast, Fausto R. Méndez De La Cruz, Saptarsi Basu, Roberto Lhemish Martínez Bernal, Robert W. Murphy, Michael J. Hickerson, Christopher Blair

Publications and Research

The biodiversity within tropical dry forests (TDFs) is astounding and yet poorly catalogued due to inadequate sampling and the presence of cryptic species. In the Mexican TDF, endemic species are common, and the landscape has been continually altered by geological and anthropogenic changes. To understand how landscape and environmental variables have shaped the population structure of endemic species, we studied the recently described species of leaf-toed gecko, Phyllodactylus benedettii, in coastal western Mexico. Using double-digest restriction site-associated DNA sequencing data, we first explore population structure and estimate the number of ancestral populations. The results indicate a high degree of …

Early Pleistocene Large Mammals From Maka’Amitalu, Hadar, Lower Awash Valley, Ethiopia, John Rowan, Ignacio A. Lazagabaster, Christopher J. Campisano, Faysal Bibi, René Bobe, Jean-Renaud Boisserie, Stephen R. Frost, Tomas Getachew, Christopher C. Gilbert, Margaret E. Lewis, Sahleselasie Melaku, Eric Scott, Antoine Souron, Lars Werdelin, William H. Kimbel, Kaye E. Reed

Publications and Research

The Early Pleistocene was a critical time period in the evolution of eastern African mammal faunas, but fossil assemblages sampling this interval are poorly known from Ethiopia ’ s Afar Depression. Field work by the Hadar Research Project in the Busidima Formation exposures (~2.7 – 0.8 Ma) of Hadar in the lower Awash Valley, resulted in the recovery of an early Homo maxilla (A.L. 666-1) with associated stone tools and fauna from the Maka ’ amitalu basin in the 1990s. These assemblages are dated to ~2.35 Ma by the Bouroukie Tuff 3 (BKT-3). Continued work by the Hadar Research Project …

Ontogenetic Drivers Of Morphological Evolution In Monitor Lizards And Allies (Squamata: Paleoanguimorpha), A Clade With Extreme Body Size Disparity, Carlos J. Pavón-Vázquez, Damien Esquerré, J. Scott Keogh

Publications and Research

Background

Heterochrony, change in the rate or timing of development, is thought to be one of the main drivers of morphological evolution, and allometry, trait scaling patterns imposed by size, is traditionally thought to represent an evolutionary constraint. However, recent studies suggest that the ontogenetic allometric trajectories describing how organisms change as they grow may be labile and adaptive. Here we investigated the role of postnatal ontogenetic development in the morphological diversification of Paleoanguimorpha, the monitor lizards and allies, a clade with extreme body size disparity. We obtained linear and geometric morphometric data for more than 1,600 specimens belonging to …