Identifying Complex DNA Contamination in Pig-Footed Bandicoots Helps to Clarify an Anomalous Ecological Transition

Phillips, Matthew J.; Cascini, Manuela; Celik, Melina Anouche

doi:10.3390/d14050352

Cited by 10 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…[49,[86][87][88]), and even in major amniote clades [89]. True to the spreading of variation during Procrustes superimposition, GMM thus seems to capture variation in Gestalt (the invariants, or commonalities, of a collection of patterns; [90]) which often accompanies ecomorphological divergences such as those among marsupial orders [91]. It is possible that the stronger signal of the Rest of Cranium partition arises from the evolution of its multiple functional and/or developmental modules [92].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multiple modes of inference reveal less phylogenetic signal in marsupial basicranial shape compared with the rest of the cranium

Weisbecker

Beck

Guillerme

et al. 2023

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Incorporating morphological data into modern phylogenies allows integration of fossil evidence, facilitating divergence dating and macroevolutionary inferences. Improvements in the phylogenetic utility of morphological data have been sought via Procrustes-based geometric morphometrics (GMM), but with mixed success and little clarity over what anatomical areas are most suitable. Here, we assess GMM-based phylogenetic reconstructions in a heavily sampled source of discrete characters for mammalian phylogenetics—the basicranium—in 57 species of marsupial mammals, compared with the remainder of the cranium. We show less phylogenetic signal in the basicranium compared with a ‘Rest of Cranium’ partition, using diverse metrics of phylogenetic signal ( K mult , phylogenetically aligned principal components analysis, comparisons of UPGMA/neighbour-joining/parsimony trees and cophenetic distances to a reference phylogeny) for scaled, Procrustes-aligned landmarks and allometry-corrected residuals. Surprisingly, a similar pattern emerged from parsimony-based analyses of discrete cranial characters. The consistent results across methods suggest that easily computed metrics such as K mult can provide good guidance on phylogenetic information in a landmarking configuration. In addition, GMM data may be less informative for intricate but conservative anatomical regions such as the basicranium, while better—but not necessarily novel—phylogenetic information can be expected for broadly characterized shapes such as entire bones. This article is part of the theme issue ‘The mammalian skull: development, structure and function’.

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