Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals
Abstract Body mass plays a fundamental role in the macroevolutionary dynamics of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification. Given biomechanical principles, large body masses in terrestrial vertebrates may impose important constraints on the adaptative potential of skeletal morpholo...
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| Language: | English |
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BMC
2025-07-01
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| Series: | BMC Ecology and Evolution |
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| Online Access: | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02393-9 |
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| author | Priscila S. Rothier Anthony Herrel Roger B. J. Benson Brandon P. Hedrick |
| author_facet | Priscila S. Rothier Anthony Herrel Roger B. J. Benson Brandon P. Hedrick |
| author_sort | Priscila S. Rothier |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | Abstract Body mass plays a fundamental role in the macroevolutionary dynamics of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification. Given biomechanical principles, large body masses in terrestrial vertebrates may impose important constraints on the adaptative potential of skeletal morphology. This is especially true for the limbs, which are involved in both supporting and propelling the body during locomotion. We present a novel framework for evaluating how body mass structures patterns of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification using a dataset of forelimb traits for more than 600 terrestrial mammal species. We found that forelimb shape disparity increases with body mass for mammals generally as well as within mammalian subclades, suggesting that this trend is robust to phylogenetic scale. However, both phylogenetic and locomotor diversity (a proxy for ecological diversity) were high for all except the largest mammals and were not strongly associated with body mass. This suggests that small mammals are capable of speciating widely and evolving novel locomotor modes without requiring drastic changes to forelimb shape. However, as body mass increases, biomechanical constraints require substantial morphological changes to the forelimb to adapt to similar levels of locomotor mode disparity. We also show that different limb bone elements do not respond in the same way to increases in body mass when analyzed individually, perhaps due to differing developmental constraints. We provide new insights on how body mass structures macroevolutionary processes in mammals, and our approach can be generalized to examine this question for a variety of traits, ecological modes, and phylogenetic groups. |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj-art-28437fb9069448d6971bf398eabaecf7 |
| institution | DOAJ |
| issn | 2730-7182 |
| language | English |
| publishDate | 2025-07-01 |
| publisher | BMC |
| record_format | Article |
| series | BMC Ecology and Evolution |
| spelling | doaj-art-28437fb9069448d6971bf398eabaecf72025-08-20T03:04:11ZengBMCBMC Ecology and Evolution2730-71822025-07-0125111310.1186/s12862-025-02393-9Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammalsPriscila S. Rothier0Anthony Herrel1Roger B. J. Benson2Brandon P. Hedrick3Department of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine at, Cornell UniversityDépartement Adaptations du Vivant, Muséum National d’Histoire NaturelleDivision of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural HistoryDepartment of Biomedical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine at, Cornell UniversityAbstract Body mass plays a fundamental role in the macroevolutionary dynamics of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification. Given biomechanical principles, large body masses in terrestrial vertebrates may impose important constraints on the adaptative potential of skeletal morphology. This is especially true for the limbs, which are involved in both supporting and propelling the body during locomotion. We present a novel framework for evaluating how body mass structures patterns of morphological, ecological, and phylogenetic diversification using a dataset of forelimb traits for more than 600 terrestrial mammal species. We found that forelimb shape disparity increases with body mass for mammals generally as well as within mammalian subclades, suggesting that this trend is robust to phylogenetic scale. However, both phylogenetic and locomotor diversity (a proxy for ecological diversity) were high for all except the largest mammals and were not strongly associated with body mass. This suggests that small mammals are capable of speciating widely and evolving novel locomotor modes without requiring drastic changes to forelimb shape. However, as body mass increases, biomechanical constraints require substantial morphological changes to the forelimb to adapt to similar levels of locomotor mode disparity. We also show that different limb bone elements do not respond in the same way to increases in body mass when analyzed individually, perhaps due to differing developmental constraints. We provide new insights on how body mass structures macroevolutionary processes in mammals, and our approach can be generalized to examine this question for a variety of traits, ecological modes, and phylogenetic groups.https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02393-9ForelimbDisparityLocomotionMammaliaSize |
| spellingShingle | Priscila S. Rothier Anthony Herrel Roger B. J. Benson Brandon P. Hedrick Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals BMC Ecology and Evolution Forelimb Disparity Locomotion Mammalia Size |
| title | Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| title_full | Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| title_fullStr | Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| title_full_unstemmed | Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| title_short | Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| title_sort | body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals |
| topic | Forelimb Disparity Locomotion Mammalia Size |
| url | https://doi.org/10.1186/s12862-025-02393-9 |
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