Disparities in the analysis of morphological disparity

Guillerme, Thomas; Cooper, Natalie; Brusatte, Stephen L.; Davis, Katie E.; Jackson, Andrew L.; Gerber, Sylvain; Goswami, Anjali; Healy, Kevin; Hopkins, Melanie J.; Jones, Marc E. H.; Lloyd, Graeme T.; O’Reilly, Joseph; Pate, Abi; Puttick, Mark N.; Rayfield, Emily J.; Saupe, Erin E.; Sherratt, Emma; Slater, Graham J.; Weisbecker, Vera; Thomas, Gavin H.; Donoghue, Philip C. J.

doi:10.1098/rsbl.2020.0199

Cited by 75 publications

(72 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…However, diversity takes no account of the morphological differences between species, a property known as morphological disparity (Wills et al 1994). Researchers have attempted to formally define disparity in different ways, but most of the indices that derive from these definitions quantify variation in morphology or phenotype (Wills 2001;Hopkins and Gerber 2017;Guillerme et al 2020a).…”

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The complex effects of mass extinctions on morphological disparity

2020

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Studies of biodiversity through deep time have been a staple for biologists and paleontologists for over 60 years. Investigations of species richness (diversity) revealed that at least five mass extinctions punctuated the last half billion years, each seeing the rapid demise of a large proportion of contemporary taxa. In contrast to diversity, the response of morphological diversity (disparity) to mass extinctions is unclear. Generally, diversity and disparity are decoupled, such that diversity may decline as morphological disparity increases, and vice versa. Here, we develop simulations to model disparity changes across mass extinctions using continuous traits and birth-death trees. We find no simple null for disparity change following a mass extinction but do observe general patterns. The range of trait values decreases following either random or trait-selective mass extinctions, whereas variance and the density of morphospace occupation only decline following trait-selective events. General trends may differentiate random and trait-selective mass extinctions, but methods struggle to identify trait selectivity. Long-term effects of mass extinction trait selectivity change support for phylogenetic comparative methods away from the simulated Brownian motion toward Ornstein-Uhlenbeck and Early Burst models. We find that morphological change over mass extinction is best studied by quantifying multiple aspects of morphospace occupation.

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confidence: 99%

“…Researchers have attempted to formally define disparity in different ways, but most of the indices that derive from these definitions quantify variation in morphology or phenotype (Wills 2001; Hopkins and Gerber 2017; Guillerme et al. 2020a).…”

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confidence: 99%

The complex effects of mass extinctions on morphological disparity

2020

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“…All scores were re-sampled through a bootstrapping method to obtain confidence intervals. The disparity was calculated with two metrics in order to account for different aspects of morphological distribution along the morphospace (Guillerme et al, 2020): the sum of variance in every dimension and the sum of the distance of each species to the centroid of their group polygon (Guillerme, 2018). A t-student test was run to test for differences between Scarus and Sparisoma disparities.…”

Section: Phylogenetic Principal Component Analysis and Morpho-functional Disparitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Are Feeding Modes Concealing Morphofunctional Diversity? The Case of the New World Parrotfishes

Pombo-Ayora

Tavera

2021

Front. Mar. Sci.

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In functional ecology, morphology is expected to reflect function; however, occasional decoupling of these two can be found. In the case of feeding ecology, the diversity of the diet or diversity of the feeding modes within a clade is expected to be positively related to the diversity of the morphological traits involved in the feeding performance. Parrotfishes are separated into two main groups, the “reef” clade and the “seagrass” clade. Both groups have important differences in their evolutionary history. Still, more interestingly, they have important morphological and ecological differences. The genera Scarus and Sparisoma are the most specious genera of parrotfishes. They belong to each of those main groups, respectively. All Scarus species have the same feeding mode, while in Sparisoma, there are three different feeding modes. We want to test if the morphological jaw diversity of these genera corresponds with the diversity in their feeding modes. Using a disparity analysis of feeding traits within a phylogenetical framework, we did not find a relationship between functional feeding morphology and feeding modes of the American parrotfishes of the genera Scarus and Sparisoma. Interestingly we found that some muscular traits are the source of the high disparity in the genus Scarus. We explore some possible morpho-functional reasons for this phenomenon and reappraise the parrotfishes’ scraper feeding mode’s functional diversity. We also consider that there could be more ecological differentiation between Scarus species that we are aware of. Using an ancestral reconstruction of feeding modes of 52 species of parrotfishes, we found that the scraping feeding mode exhibited by all Scarus species is an evolutionary convergence with the scraping feeding modes performed by some Sparisoma species. Different selective pressures or ecological conditions may have shaped the differences in the feeding ecology and the feeding morphology of these two genera. Probably, key novel structures and muscular properties found in the Scarus species’ jaw played an essential role in this genus’s morpho-functional diversification. Finally, we propose that feeding modes may not fully capture the complexity of feeding ecology in parrotfishes.

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“…Due to this radical phenotypic change, the summer phenotype of M. arvensis was located in a different, more central position of the floral morphospace (Figure 1a), far away from the region occupied by the Moricandia species. As a consequence of this jump, the morphological disparity between the spring and summer phenotypes of M. arvensis, calculated as their distance in the morphospace (26), was very high (0.264). In fact, it was much higher than the average pairwise disparities among all studied Brassicaceae species (0.155 ± 0.090, mean ± s.e.m., 4,912,545 pairwise disparities) and almost 50% of the largest observed disparity (0.55) (Table S4).…”

Section: Plasticity-mediated Floral Disparity and Divergencementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The family-wide phylomorphospace was very tangled (Figure 2a), with 492,751 intersections among lineages, suggesting the presence of many events of floral divergence and convergence in the evolution of Brassicaceae pollination traits (11). To calculate the disparity of the M. arvensis floral phenotypes to their ancestor, because these analyses are sensitive to the tree topology and the inferred branch lengths (26), we used four independent, time-calibrated phylogenies that included this species (Methods). The results were consistent across phylogenies (Figure 2b,c; Tables S3).…”

Section: Plasticity-mediated Floral Disparity and Divergencementioning

confidence: 99%

Phenotypic plasticity triggers rapid morphological convergence

Gómez

González‐Megías

Narbona

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Phenotypic convergence, the independent evolution of similar traits, is ubiquitous in nature, happening at all levels of biological organizations and in most kinds of living beings. Uncovering its mechanisms remains a fundamental goal in biology. Evolutionary theory considers that convergence emerges through independent genetic changes selected over long periods of time. We show in this study that convergence can also arise through phenotypic plasticity. We illustrate this idea by investigating how plasticity drives Moricandia arvensis, a mustard species displaying within-individual polyphenism in flowers, across the morphological space of the entire Brassicaceae family. By compiling the multidimensional floral phenotype, the phylogenetic relationships, and the pollination niche of over 3000 Brassicaceae species, we demonstrated that Moricandia arvensis exhibits a plastic-mediated within-individual floral disparity greater than that found not only between species but also between higher taxonomical levels such as genera and tribes. As a consequence of this divergence, M. arvensis moves outside the morphospace region occupied by its ancestors and close relatives, crosses into a new region where it encounters a different pollination niche and converges phenotypically with distant Brassicaceae lineages. Our study suggests that, by inducing phenotypes that explore simultaneously different regions of the morphological space, plasticity triggers rapid phenotypic convergence.

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Disparities in the analysis of morphological disparity

Cited by 75 publications

References 72 publications

The complex effects of mass extinctions on morphological disparity

The complex effects of mass extinctions on morphological disparity

Are Feeding Modes Concealing Morphofunctional Diversity? The Case of the New World Parrotfishes

Phenotypic plasticity triggers rapid morphological convergence

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