Patterns of morphological evolution in the mandible of the house mouse Mus musculus (Rodentia: Muridae)

Abstract

The worldwide distributed house mouse, Mus musculus, is subdivided into at least three lineages, Mus musculus musculus, Mus musculus domesticus, and Mus musculus castaneus. The subspecies occur parapatrically in a region considered to be the cradle of the species in Southern Asia ('central region'), as well as in the rest of the world ('peripheral region'). The morphological evolution of this species in a phylogeographical context is studied using a landmark-based approach on mandible morphology of different populations of the three lineages. The morphological variation increases from central to peripheral regions at the population and subspecific levels, confirming a centrifugal sub-speciation within this species. Furthermore, the outgroup comparison with sister species suggests that M. musculus musculus and populations of all subspecies inhabiting the Iranian plateau have retained a more ancestral mandible morphology, suggesting that this region may represent one of the relevant places of the origin of the species. Mus musculus castaneus, both from central and peripheral regions, is morphologically the most variable and divergent subspecies. Finally, the results obtained in the present study suggest that the independent evolution to commensalism in the three lineages is not accompanied by a convergence detectable on jaw morphology.

Craniofacial shape transition across the house mouse hybrid zone: implications for the genetic architecture and evolution of between-species differences

“…Several studies have explored craniofacial shape variation between subspecies of the house mouse (Mus musculus) around the world (Macholán 2006;Boell and Tautz 2011;Siahsarvie et al 2012). The effect of hybridization on craniofacial traits has been studied using wild hybrid mice (Alibert et al 1994;Auffray et al 1996;Mikula and Macholán 2008;Mikula et al 2010), as well as wildderived inbred lines representing different subspecies (Renaud et al 2009(Renaud et al , 2012.…”

Biogeographic variations in wood mice: testing for the role of morphological variation as a line of least resistance to evolution

“…Such methods, based on landmarks or outline analyses, have been used to tackle many topics regarding rodent evolution: evolutionary patterns along fossil lineages (Renaud et al 1996Piras et al 2009;Stoetzel et al 2013), diversification among species, addressing the respective role of adaptation and neutral evolution (e.g. Cardini 2003;Monteiro et al 2005;Macholan 2006;Michaux et al 2007a); differentiation between populations, investigating the role of environmental variations (Renaud 1999;Fadda and Corti 2001;Michaux 2003, 2007;McGuire 2010;Helvaci et al 2012), processes favoring co--occurrence among species , patterns and route of colonization (Valenzuela--Lamas et al 2011;Siahsarvie et al 2012;Cucchi et al 2013). …”

Jaw growth in the absence of teeth: the developmental morphology of edentulous mandibles using the p63 mouse mutant

“…At this time, mouse is probably the longest standing if not also the best-established experimental model available to study mammalian odontogenesis (e.g., Thesleff et al 1987;Vainio et al 1993;Chen et al 1996;Peterková et al 1996;Vaahtokari et al 1996;Chai et al 1998;Cobourne and Sharpe 2002;Thesleff 2003Thesleff , 2006Kim et al 2012) as well as mandible morphogenesis and growth (e.g., Cheverud et al 1991;Leamy 1993;Klingenberg et al 2004;Caumul and Polly 2005;Zelditch et al 2008Zelditch et al , 2009Burgio et al 2012;Renaud et al 2012;Siahsarvie et al 2012), even as it translates to primates (Willmore et al 2009). In particular, the p63 knock-out mouse mutant (Mills et al 1999;Yang et al 1999) has already been applied successfully to study the processes regulating the earliest onset of tooth initiation and morphogenesis (Laurikkala et al 2006;Rufini et al 2006).…”