Nearly all diverse animal orders and classes, and many families and super-families, are composed of species whose body sizes are distributed as positively skewed histograms. We show that ‘island rule’ effects are widespread in mammals, birds and reptiles, but less evident in amphibians, which mostly tend towards gigantism. additional, unknown model inadequacies. Despite a superficial resemblance to some primitive snakes, amphisbaenians have many unique features that distinguish them from other reptiles. Cope's rule, the tendency for lineages to evolve to larger body size, is widely seen as a pervasive evolutionary pattern1–4. The worldwide proportion of snakes associated with inland waters is an estimate based on thoroughly documented large regions such as the USA, Australia, and Europe, and smaller representative regions, including Costa Rica, Borneo, Iran, and South Africa. Coastal marshes are a type of brackish water system. An increase in ecological opportunities, either through changes in the environment or acquisition of new traits, is frequently associated with an increase in species and morphological diversification. Mature Southern Black Racers vs. Eastern Indigo Snakes. Additionally, some amphisbaenians still have forelimbs, but no caecilians have limbs. Results I obtained body size data for 99% of the world's lizard species. As with amphibians, evaporation is often the largest avenue of water loss from reptiles. (2016). Rather, marine reptiles are known to represent a variety of distinct adaptations to habitual life in the sea, and thus ocean-going lineages arose numerous times during the Mesozoic. Both conservation and convergence have their issues: conservation is made less likely by the 320 million-plus years since the amniote LCA (Benton, 2009), while convergence is difficult to assess without prior knowledge of plesiomorphic states in the sauropsid and synapsid lineages. Main types of variable contained Here, we address this question by comparing the distribution of maximum species body size for dinosaurs to an extensive set of extant and extinct vertebrate groups. The size and number of eggs produced by different species varies considerably. We test these ideas in a vertebrate group that is a model for competition and evolutionary studies The northern grass lizard (Takydromus septentrionalis) is an extensively studied lacertid lizard and has a distributional range covering the central and southeastern parts of China. A rich fossil record of non-mammalian synapsids holds the key to unraveling the transition from “sprawling” to “erect” limb function in the precursors to mammals, but a detailed understanding of muscle functional anatomy is a necessary prerequisite to reconstructing postural evolution in fossils. Because incomplete sampling may bias our inferences, we must evaluate how future additions of newly discovered species might impact analyses performed today. Our review highlights the need for simultaneous measurements of both human activity and wildlife response. Using a dataset spanning the life span data of 4,100 land vertebrate species (2,214 endotherms, 1,886 ectotherms), we performed the most comprehensive test to date of the fundamental predictions underlying the rate‐of‐living theory. Recent methods for explicitly modeling the Then, in Chapter Three, I present a method to reconstruct temporal patterns in the evolution of biodiversity based on ancestral range estimates from historical biogeographic models. The similarities are striking, but some patterns of the fossil record are not simulated by random processes. 4a, c, d and Supplementary Figs.
ResultsBSFD of snakes at the community, biome, regional and clade scales show symmetric distributions of body size. The primary type specimens of all currently recognized geckos (including subspecies) are distributed over 161 collections worldwide, with 20 collections having about two thirds of all primary types. Adaptive radiations are triggered by ecological opportunity – the access to novel niche domains with abundant available resources that facilitate the formation of new ecologically divergent species. Zug GR, Vitt LJ, and Caldwell JP (2001) Herpetology: An Introductory Biology of Amphibians and Reptiles, 2nd edn. The primary type specimens of about 40 gecko taxa have been lost or unknown. Additionally, we failed to identify evidence for a role of body size or biogeography in influencing diversification rates. In an account of his voyage, the authenticity of which is doubtful, he records "some snakes" from the island. Second, to further test for correlations between N e and element abundance or truncation using an approach that is independent of inferences of generation time and mutation rates, and independent of potential biases associated with coalescence-based estimates of N e (i.e., population substructure, migration, selection) 49-55 , we used adult body mass as a proxy for N e for all species included in our study (as in ref. Therefore, they had longer lower limbs as well. Among legged species, the foraging strategy strongly influences the weights, with sit-and-wait species being bulkier at comparable lengths than active foraging species. Although his interpretation was erroneous, Cope himself adopted this viewpoint. This relation was used to extrapolate the total number of individuals for all reptile species, by using range sizes data (182) as a surrogate for study area, and data on body mass. Island faunas can be characterized by gigantism in small animals and dwarfism in large animals, but the extent to which this so-called ‘island rule’ provides a general explanation for evolutionary trajectories on islands remains contentious. “Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation,” United Nations Publication Sales No. 2011;Okie et al. Results Body mass values are based on maximum SVLs per species converted to mass using family-specific equations, adjusted for leg-reduced and legless species, ... We are grateful to the LabEx BCDiv "Biological and Cultural diversities: Origins, Evolution, Interactions, Future" for having supported this project. As geographic turnover of modal-sized species is theoretically linked to an evolutionarily Do they share a similar distribution to modern day vertebrate groups in spite of their large size, or did they exhibit fundamentally different distributions due to unique evolutionary pressures and adaptations? We find that direct observation is the most commonly used method to capture human-wildlife interactions, followed by the use of telemetry, and camera traps. We show that the abundances of 85% of species are affected, either positively or negatively, by forest edges. PanTHERIA also includes spatial databases of mammalian geographic ranges and global climatic and anthropogenic variables. Compared to more wide-ranging taxa, they mostly inhabit relatively inaccessible regions at lower, mostly tropical, latitudes. Previously used allometric equations are inaccurate. 4b) showed different levels of truncation and of TE genomic abundance, and that even within a species TE truncation and abundance were poorly correlated (Fig. 2014 and microhabitat. We hypothesize that such conditions – which are unsuitable for species constrained to laying multiple small clutches – may limit the distribution of fixed‐clutch taxa. However, species in sympatry show higher disparity, which may have been caused by character displacement among coexisting species. Terrestrial amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Mining had the most negative impacts on reptile abundance, followed by agriculture, grazing, plantations and patch size reduction, whereas the mean effect of logging was neutral. (Graphic picture)? diversification, and related to host body mass, host density, latitude, and whether the host is aquatic or terrestrial. The results demonstrated that the dominant microbial components in both groups consisted of Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, and Tenericutes. I have performed a comprehensive census of body-size changes in a large fauna of Cretaceous bivalve and gastropod genera. We find that the higher diversity among small animals is indeed, partly, caused by higher clade age. Aim: Small geographic ranges make species especially prone to extinction from anthropogenic disturbances or natural stochastic events. The body size–frequency distribution is highly modal and right skewed and similar distributions characterize most lizard families and lizard assemblages across biogeographical realms. Here, we test the hypothesis that Nothobranchius killifish have non-adaptively diversified. Body size and body shape are tightly related to an animal's physiology, ecology and life history, and, as such, play a major role in understanding ecological and evolutionary phenomena. In most of these, hatching of eggs appears to be synchronous (Fig. However, this exceptional diversity also makes systematic quantification and analysis of their morphological evolution challenging. Main conclusions: The global distribution of body mass among living squamates varies independently from the variation in multiple components of climate.
I then use a species-level phylogenetic hypothesis to examine the ecological factors that affect the variation in weight–length relationships. Here we assembled a global dataset on species responses to fragmentation and developed a statistical approach for quantifying edge impacts in heterogeneous landscapes to quantify edge-determined changes in abundance of 1,673 vertebrate species. 2.Host diet and habitat use play key roles in the acquisition of parasitic helminths as many are trophically‐transmitted, making these attributes potentially key indicators of infection risk. Amphisbaena ridleyi, known by the common names Ridley's worm lizard or the Noronha worm lizard, is a species of amphisbaenian in the family Amphisbaenidae. Second, uric acid precipitates along with dietary cations such as sodium and potassium, thereby saving the water these ions would otherwise require for their elimination in dissolved form. According to the evolutionary theories of senescence, when mortality pressures are low, animals delay reproduction. I examine several hypotheses regarding the influence of body size on lizard evolution and extinction risk, assessing whether body size influences, or is influenced by, species richness, herbivory, island dwelling and extinction risk. We tested for life-history differences between insular and mainland forms in light of the island syndrome, controlling for mass and latitude, and for phylogenetic non-independence. Location Two basic components of overall shape in scincid lizards were examined in 34 representative species: hind limb length and SVL, both relative to head length.
Yet, despite the growing interest in macroevolutionary rates and the bloom of new quantitative methods in the last two decades, most of the studies that explore the drivers of clades' diversification focus on one aspect of the many that could shape trees over evolutionary time-scales (e.g. Metabolic theory predicts how metabolic rate, by setting the rates of resource uptake from the environment and resource allocation to survival, growth, and reproduction, controls ecological processes at all levels of organization from individuals to the biosphere. higher Type I error rate, indicating that the method is susceptible to Most amphibians and reptiles maintain homeostasis, but a few species can tolerate high plasma solute concentrations for extended time periods (anhomeostasis).
Amphisbaenians are more closely related to lizards, snakes, and crocodilians than they are to turtles. Forest edges influence more than half of the world's forests and contribute to worldwide declines in biodiversity and ecosystem functions.
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