Meloro Carlo, Cáceres Nilton Carlos, Carotenuto Francesco, Sponchiado Jonas, Melo Geruza Leal, Passaro Federico, Raia Pasquale
Research Centre in Evolutionary Anthropology and Palaeoecology, School of Natural Sciences and Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University, James Parsons Building, Byrom Street, Liverpool, L3 3AF, UK.
Laboratory of Ecology and Biogeography, Department of Biology, CCNE, Federal University of Santa Maria, Santa Maria, RS, 97110-970, Brazil.
Evolution. 2015 Jul;69(7):1690-700. doi: 10.1111/evo.12694. Epub 2015 Jun 30.
Chewing on different food types is a demanding biological function. The classic assumption in studying the shape of feeding apparatuses is that animals are what they eat, meaning that adaptation to different food items accounts for most of their interspecific variation. Yet, a growing body of evidence points against this concept. We use the primate mandible as a model structure to investigate the complex interplay among shape, size, diet, and phylogeny. We find a weak but significant impact of diet on mandible shape variation in primates as a whole but not in anthropoids and catarrhines as tested in isolation. These clades mainly exhibit allometric shape changes, which are unrelated to diet. Diet is an important factor in the diversification of strepsirrhines and platyrrhines and a phylogenetic signal is detected in all primate clades. Peaks in morphological disparity occur during the Oligocene (between 37 and 25 Ma) supporting the notion that an adaptive radiation characterized the evolution of South American monkeys. In all primate clades, the evolution of mandible size is faster than its shape pointing to a strong effect of allometry on ecomorphological diversification in this group.
咀嚼不同类型的食物是一项要求颇高的生物学功能。在研究进食器官形状时的经典假设是，动物吃什么就是什么，这意味着对不同食物的适应解释了它们种间差异的大部分原因。然而，越来越多的证据表明这一概念并不成立。我们以灵长类动物的下颌骨作为模型结构，来研究形状、大小、饮食和系统发育之间的复杂相互作用。我们发现，总体而言，饮食对灵长类动物下颌骨形状变异有微弱但显著的影响，但在单独测试的类人猿和狭鼻猿中则没有这种影响。这些类群主要表现出异速生长的形状变化，这与饮食无关。饮食是狐猴和阔鼻猴多样化的一个重要因素，并且在所有灵长类类群中都检测到了系统发育信号。形态差异的峰值出现在渐新世（3700万至2500万年前），这支持了南美猴子的进化具有适应性辐射这一观点。在所有灵长类类群中，下颌骨大小的进化比其形状的进化更快，这表明异速生长对该类群的生态形态多样化有强烈影响。
