Lazić Marko M, Carretero Miguel A, Crnobrnja-Isailović Jelka, Kaliontzopoulou Antigoni
Department of Biology and Ecology, Faculty of Sciences and Mathematics, University of Niš, Niš, Serbia.
Am Nat. 2015 Jan;185(1):44-58. doi: 10.1086/679011. Epub 2014 Dec 15.
When populations experience suboptimal conditions, the mechanisms involved in the regulation of phenotypic variation can be challenged, resulting in increased phenotypic variance. This kind of disturbance can be diagnosed by using morphometric tools to study morphological patterns at different hierarchical levels and evaluate canalization, developmental stability, integration, modularity, and allometry. We assess the effect of urbanization on phenotypic variation in the common wall lizard (Podarcis muralis) by using geometric morphometrics to assess disturbance to head shape development. The head shapes of urban lizards were more variable and less symmetric, suggesting that urban living is more likely to disturb development. Head shape variation was congruent within and across individuals, which indicated that canalization and developmental stability are two related phenomena in these organisms. Furthermore, urban lizards exhibited smaller mean head sizes, divergent size-shape allometries, and increased deviation from within-group allometric lines. This suggests that mechanisms regulating head shape allometry may also be disrupted. The integrated evaluation of several measures of developmental instability at different hierarchical levels, which provided in this case congruent results, can be a powerful methodological guide for future studies, as it enhances the detection of environmental disturbances on phenotypic variation and aids biological interpretation of the results.
当种群经历次优条件时，参与表型变异调控的机制可能会受到挑战，导致表型方差增加。这种干扰可以通过使用形态测量工具来研究不同层次水平的形态模式，并评估发育稳态、发育稳定性、整合性、模块性和异速生长来诊断。我们通过使用几何形态测量学来评估城市化对普通壁蜥（Podarcis muralis）头部形状发育的干扰，从而评估城市化对其表型变异的影响。城市蜥蜴的头部形状更具变异性且对称性更低，这表明城市生活更有可能干扰发育。头部形状的变异在个体内部和个体之间是一致的，这表明发育稳态和发育稳定性在这些生物体中是两个相关的现象。此外，城市蜥蜴的平均头部尺寸较小，大小 - 形状异速生长不同，并且与组内异速生长线的偏差增加。这表明调节头部形状异速生长的机制也可能受到破坏。在不同层次水平上对几种发育不稳定性测量指标进行综合评估，在这种情况下提供了一致的结果，这可以成为未来研究的有力方法指南，因为它增强了对环境干扰对表型变异影响的检测，并有助于对结果进行生物学解释。
