Verde Arregoitia Luis D, Fisher Diana O, Schweizer Manuel
Naturhistorisches Museum Bern, Bernastrasse 15, Bern 3005 , Switzerland.
School of Biological Sciences , University of Queensland , St Lucia, Queensland 4072 , Australia.
R Soc Open Sci. 2017 Jan 18;4(1):160957. doi: 10.1098/rsos.160957. eCollection 2017 Jan.
To understand the functional meaning of morphological features, we need to relate what we know about morphology and ecology in a meaningful, quantitative framework. Closely related species usually share more phenotypic features than distant ones, but close relatives do not necessarily have the same ecologies. Rodents are the most diverse group of living mammals, with impressive ecomorphological diversification. We used museum collections and ecological literature to gather data on morphology, diet and locomotion for 208 species of rodents from different bioregions to investigate how morphological similarity and phylogenetic relatedness are associated with ecology. After considering differences in body size and shared evolutionary history, we find that unrelated species with similar ecologies can be characterized by a well-defined suite of morphological features. Our results validate the hypothesized ecological relevance of the chosen traits. These cranial, dental and external (e.g. ears) characters predicted diet and locomotion and showed consistent differences among species with different feeding and substrate use strategies. We conclude that when ecological characters do not show strong phylogenetic patterns, we cannot simply assume that close relatives are ecologically similar. Museum specimens are valuable records of species' phenotypes and with the characters proposed here, morphology can reflect functional similarity, an important component of community ecology and macroevolution.
为了理解形态特征的功能意义，我们需要在一个有意义的定量框架内，将我们对形态学和生态学的了解联系起来。亲缘关系密切的物种通常比亲缘关系较远的物种共享更多的表型特征，但近亲不一定具有相同的生态习性。啮齿动物是现存哺乳动物中种类最多样化的群体，具有令人印象深刻的生态形态学多样化。我们利用博物馆藏品和生态文献，收集了来自不同生物区域的208种啮齿动物的形态、饮食和运动数据，以研究形态相似性和系统发育相关性如何与生态习性相关联。在考虑了体型差异和共同的进化历史后，我们发现具有相似生态习性的非亲缘物种可以通过一套明确的形态特征来表征。我们的结果验证了所选性状假设的生态相关性。这些颅骨、牙齿和外部（如耳朵）特征预测了饮食和运动，并在具有不同摄食和底物利用策略的物种之间表现出一致的差异。我们得出结论，当生态特征没有显示出强烈的系统发育模式时，我们不能简单地假设近亲在生态上是相似的。博物馆标本是物种表型的宝贵记录，利用这里提出的特征，形态学可以反映功能相似性，这是群落生态学和宏观进化的一个重要组成部分。
