Trends of specialisation in rodents: the hamsters, subfamily Cricetinae (Cricetidae, Rodentia, Mammalia)

Miljutin, Andrei

doi:10.2478/v10043-011-0024-0

Cited by 7 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Several biological and ecological characteristics were added to the species list from various sources. These included body mass (g), mean latitude, actual evapotranspiration rate (AET) (mm), precipitation (mm) (Jones et al, 2009), natural diet composition as the percentage of faunivory, invertivory, herbivory, granivory, frugivory, and folivory in natural diet (Wilman et al, 2014), food hoarding behavior (no/yes) (McCarty & Southwick, 1975; Miljutin, 2011) and the occurrence of cheek pouches (no/yes) (Miljutin, 2011; Ryan, 1989; Vander Wall & Dittel, 2021) or birth seasonality (Heldstab, 2021). Additionally, data on body mass and intestine lengths (small intestine, large intestine, cecum, total GIT length; Duque‐Correa et al, 2021) and body mass and basal metabolic rate (BMR; Genoud et al, 2018) were used for models that used log‐transformed intestine lengths or BMR as the dependent variable and log‐transformed body mass as the independent variable, to test whether the addition of the stomach ratio as a covariable increased the data fit of these models.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No news from old drawings? Stomach anatomy in muroid rodents in relation to body size and ecology

Steiner

Clauss

Martin

et al. 2022

Journal of Morphology

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Muroid rodents mostly have a complex stomach: one part is lined with a cornified (nonglandular) epithelium, referred to as a "forestomach", whereas the rest is lined with glandular epithelium. Numerous functions for the forestomach have been proposed. We collated a catalog of anatomical depictions of the stomach of 174 muroid species from which the respective nonglandular and glandular areas could be digitally measured, yielding a "stomach ratio" (nonglandular:glandular area) as a scale-independent variable. Stomach ratios ranged from 0.13 to 20.15, and the coefficient of intraspecific variation if more than one picture was available for a species averaged at 29.7% (±21.5). We tested relationships of the ratio with body mass and various anatomical and ecological variables, including diet. There was a consistent phylogenetic signal, suggesting that closely related species share a similar anatomy. Apart from classifying stomachs into hemiglandular and discoglandular, no anatomical or ecological measure showed a consistent relationship to the stomach ratio. In particular, irrespective of statistical method or the source of dietary information, dietary proxies did not significantly correlate with the stomach ratio, except for a trend towards significance for invertivory (insectivory). Yet, even this relationship was not convincing: whereas highly insectivorous species had high but no low stomach ratios, herbivorous species had both low and high stomach ratios.Thus, the statistical effect is not due to a systematic increase in the relative forestomach size with invertivory. The most plausible hypotheses so far associate the muroid forestomach and its microbiome with a generic protective role against microbial or fungal toxins and diseases, without evident correlates of a peculiar need for this function under specific ecological conditions. Yet, this function remains to be confirmed. While providing a catalog of published depictions and hypotheses, this study highlights that the function of the muroid rodent forestomach remains enigmatic to date.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

No news from old drawings? Stomach anatomy in muroid rodents in relation to body size and ecology

Steiner

Clauss

Martin

et al. 2022

Journal of Morphology

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“…Focusing studies on supraspecific taxa (genera, family etc.) can help to reveal their ecomorphological diversity and to understand the course of their adaptive evolution ( Miljutin, 2011 ). Therefore, this work was carried out at the genus level, and each variable was calculated for every extant genus as the mean value of the included species (see Supplementary Information 2 ).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ecomorphological characterization of murines and non-arvicoline cricetids (Rodentia) from south-western Europe since the latest Middle Miocene to the Mio-Pliocene boundary (MN 7/8–MN13)

Cano

Kimura

Blanco

et al. 2017

PeerJ

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Rodents are the most speciose group of mammals and display a great ecological diversity. Despite the greater amount of ecomorphological information compiled for extant rodent species, studies usually lack of morphological data on dentition, which has led to difficulty in directly utilizing existing ecomorphological data of extant rodents for paleoecological reconstruction because teeth are the most common or often the only micromammal fossils. Here, we infer the environmental ranges of extinct rodent genera by extracting habitat information from extant relatives and linking it to extinct taxa based on the phenogram of the cluster analysis, in which variables are derived from the principal component analysis on outline shape of the upper first molars. This phenotypic “bracketing” approach is particularly useful in the study of the fossil record of small mammals, which is mostly represented by isolated teeth. As a case study, we utilize extinct genera of murines and non-arvicoline cricetids, ranging from the Iberoccitanian latest middle Miocene to the Mio-Pliocene boundary, and compare our results thoroughly with previous paleoecological reconstructions inferred by different methods. The resultant phenogram shows a predominance of ubiquitous genera among the Miocene taxa, and the presence of a few forest specialists in the two rodent groups (Murinae and Cricetidae), along with the absence of open environment specialists in either group of rodents. This appears to be related to the absence of enduring grassland biomes in the Iberian Peninsula during the late Miocene. High consistency between our result and previous studies suggests that this phenotypic “bracketing” approach is a very useful tool.

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“…When ecomorphological studies focus on supraspecific taxa (genera, families, etc. ), they can help to reveal the development of diversity in different groups and understand the course of their adaptive evolution [22] .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dietary Ecology of Murinae (Muridae, Rodentia): A Geometric Morphometric Approach

2013

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Murine rodents represent a highly diverse group, which displays great ecological versatility. In the present paper we analyse the relationship between dental morphology, on one hand, using geometric morphometrics based upon the outline of first upper molar and the dietary preference of extant murine genera, on the other. This ecomorphological study of extant murine rodents demonstrates that dietary groups can be distinguished with the use of a quantitative geometric morphometric approach based on first upper molar outline. A discriminant analysis of the geometric morphometric variables of the first upper molars enables us to infer the dietary preferences of extinct murine genera from the Iberian Peninsula. Most of the extinct genera were omnivore; only Stephanomys showed a pattern of dental morphology alike that of the herbivore genera.

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Trends of specialisation in rodents: the hamsters, subfamily Cricetinae (Cricetidae, Rodentia, Mammalia)

Cited by 7 publications

References 9 publications

No news from old drawings? Stomach anatomy in muroid rodents in relation to body size and ecology

No news from old drawings? Stomach anatomy in muroid rodents in relation to body size and ecology

Ecomorphological characterization of murines and non-arvicoline cricetids (Rodentia) from south-western Europe since the latest Middle Miocene to the Mio-Pliocene boundary (MN 7/8–MN13)

Dietary Ecology of Murinae (Muridae, Rodentia): A Geometric Morphometric Approach

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