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Full-Text Articles in Biology
Changes In North American Mammal Niche Preferences From The Late Pleistocene To The Present, Silvia Pineda-Munoz, Anikó Tóth, S. Kathleen Lyons, Yue Wang, Jenny Mcguire
Changes In North American Mammal Niche Preferences From The Late Pleistocene To The Present, Silvia Pineda-Munoz, Anikó Tóth, S. Kathleen Lyons, Yue Wang, Jenny Mcguire
School of Biological Sciences: Posters and Presentations
Human population has exponentially grown since the last glaciation, especially across temperate areas with easy access to water sources, excluding mammal species from their former habitats. Thus, we anticipate a change in environmental niche preferences for temperature and precipitation as increased human population forces mammal species into more extreme climates within their environmental tolerances. For our study, we collected species occurrences from 20,000 ybp to the present for 59 North American mammal species. We inferred temperature and precipitation for each location using paleoclimate simulations (CCSM3). Overall, we found that mammals now live in areas that are warmer and dryer on …
Convergent Body Size Evolution Of Crocodyliformes Upon Entering The Aquatic Realm, William Gearty, Jonathan Payne
Convergent Body Size Evolution Of Crocodyliformes Upon Entering The Aquatic Realm, William Gearty, Jonathan Payne
School of Biological Sciences: Posters and Presentations
Twenty-four species of crocodile populate the globe today, but this richness represents a minute fraction of the diversity and disparity of Crocodyliformes since their origin early in the Triassic. Across this clade, three major diversification events into the aquatic realm have occurred. Aquatic and terrestrial habitats impose differing selective pressures on body size. However, previous research on this topic in Crocodyliformes remains qualitative in nature. In this study, our goal was to quantify the influence of habitat (terrestrial versus aquatic) on the evolution of body size in Crocodyliformes. We find a history of repeated body size increase and convergence following …
Phylogenetic And Fossil Evidence For A Common Body Size Attractor In Marine Mammals, William Gearty, Jonathan Payne
Phylogenetic And Fossil Evidence For A Common Body Size Attractor In Marine Mammals, William Gearty, Jonathan Payne
School of Biological Sciences: Posters and Presentations
Evolutionary transitions between terrestrial and aquatic habitats are rare and often have large effects on the evolutionary trajectory of the clade making the transition. Following a single transition from the marine realm to the terrestrial realm, tetrapods have subsequently re-evolved a marine lifestyle at least 30 separate times. At least six of these re-invasions of the water occurred within crown-group mammals and four [sirenians (Sirenia), whales (Cetacea), pinnipeds (Pinnipedia), and otters (Lutrinae)] clades are extant. Although marine mammals are widely known to be larger than their terrestrial sister groups, the extent to which the body size evolution of these clades …