Heterochronic Detection Through a Function for the Ontogenetic Variation of Bone Shape

Abstract

Heterochrony, evolutionary modifications in the rates and/or the timing of development, is widely recognized as an important agent of evolutionary change. In this paper, we are concerned with the detection of this evolutionary mechanism through the analysis of long bone growth. For this, we provide a function (J (t) for the ontogenetic variation ofbone shape by taking the ratio of two Gompertz curves explaining, respectively, the relative contribution to long bone growth of (a) endochondral ossification and (b) periosteal ossification. The significance of the fitting of this function to empirical data was tested in Anas platyrhynchos (Anseriformes). In this function (J(t), the time tm at which periosteal growth rate first equalizes endochondral growth rate was taken as the timing parameter to be compared between taxa. On the other hand, the maximum rate of ontogenetic change in bone shape (maximum slope, 13) from hatching to t m was taken as the rate parameter to be compared.Comparisons of these parameters between the plesiomorphic condition and the derived character state would pro vide evidence for hypomorphosis (earlier occurrence of tm), hypermorphosis (delayed occurrence of tm), deceleration (smaller fJ) or acceleration (higher 13).Regarding the phylogenetic context, the ancestral condition for the character of interest should be estimated to polarize the direction ofthe heterochronic change. We have quantified the influence of the phylogenetic history on the variation of adult bone shape in a sample of 13 species of Anseriformes and 17 species from other neornithine orders of birds by using permutational phylogenetic regressions. Phylogenetic effects are significant, and this fact allows the optimization of bone shape onto a phylogenetic tree of Anseriformes to estimate the ancestral condition for Anas platyrhynchos.

Kinematics of cranial ontogeny: Heterotopy, heterochrony, and geometric morphometric analysis of growth models

“…Various researchers have tackled these issues and contributed to the foundations of a quantitative framework for comparative analysis of heterochronic and heterotopic dissociation in two-and three-dimensional morphologies (Fink and Zelditch, '95;Godfrey and Sutherland, '96;Zelditch and Fink, '96;Godfrey et al, '98;O'Higgins, 2000;Zelditch et al, 2000;Roopnarine, 2001;Zelditch et al, 2003), and there is a growing number of studies investigating the modular temporal aspects of ontogeny and their dissociation (Rice, '97;Vrba, '98;Cubo, 2000;Cubo et al, 2002;McNamara, 2002b;Vinicius and Lahr, 2003). Here, we build upon these achievements and complement them with model considerations to devise an explicit operational framework for the comparative morphometric analysis of developmental modifications during the evolution of the hominid skull.…”

Phylogenetic Signal in Bone Microstructure of Sauropsids

“…Regressions on distance matrices tested for significance by using permutations (Mantel, 1967) have been widely used to quantify phylogenetic signal in several kinds of characters, such as parasite species richness in Cyprinidae (Morand, 1997); morphological, life-history, behavioral, and ecological traits in extant birds (Böhning-Gaese and Oberrath, 1999;Böhning-Gaese et al, 2000); bone microstructural traits and bone shape in extant birds (Castanet et al, 2001;Cubo et al, 2001Cubo et al, , 2002Cubo, 2003) and in lissamphibians ; and body shape in Percidae (Guill et al, 2003).…”

“…In spite of the great development of methods to quantify phylogenetic signal for continuous characters (Legendre et al, 1994;Blomberg and Garland, 2002;Cubo et al, 2002;Freckleton et al, 2002;Blomberg et al, 2003;Laurin, 2004), so far, only two preliminary quantitative analyses have been carried out to assess the influence of the phylogeny on the variation of bone histological traits (Castanet et al, 2001;Cubo et al, 2001), and a single quantitative analysis has been carried out on bone microanatomical characters . However, studying character evolution on a cladogram using parsimony is meaningful only if heritable character variation includes a phylogenetic signal Laurin, 2004).…”

Lumbar ontogenetic allometry and dimorphism in humans. A case for comparison between interspecific and intraspecific scaling

“…These results must be put in relationship with the fact that bone growth takes place differently in length than in width. While endochondral ossification causes bone growth in length, periosteal ossification is responsible for width bone growth (Castanet et al 1996;Cubo et al 2000Cubo et al , 2002.…”

“…Complementarily, while in length growth rate decays exponentially with age, in width growth it is mitotic frequency that decays exponentially with age (Cubo 2000;Cubo et al 2002). Consequently, bone growth in length stops at a certain age, due to a change in the sensitivity to growth stimuli in the growth plate region, causing cells to lose their hyperplastic growth potential (Bogin 1999).…”