Citadini J M, Brandt R, Williams C R, Gomes F R
Department of Physiology, Bioscience Institute, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, SP, Brazil.
Department of Biology, FFCLRP/USP, Ribeirão Preto, SP, Brazil.
J Evol Biol. 2018 Mar;31(3):371-381. doi: 10.1111/jeb.13228. Epub 2018 Jan 20.
The relationships between morphology, performance, behavior and ecology provide evidence for multiple and complex phenotypic adaptations. The anuran body plan, for example, is evolutionarily conserved and shows clear specializations to jumping performance back at least to the early Jurassic. However, there are instances of more recent adaptation to habit diversity in the post-cranial skeleton, including relative limb length. The present study tested adaptive models of morphological evolution in anurans associated with the diversity of microhabitat use (semi-aquatic arboreal, fossorial, torrent, and terrestrial) in species of anuran amphibians from Brazil and Australia. We use phylogenetic comparative methods to determine which evolutionary models, including Brownian motion (BM) and Ornstein-Uhlenbeck (OU) are consistent with morphological variation observed across anuran species. Furthermore, this study investigated the relationship of maximum distance jumped as a function of components of morphological variables and microhabitat use. We found there are multiple optima of limb lengths associated to different microhabitats with a trend of increasing hindlimbs in torrent, arboreal, semi-aquatic whereas fossorial and terrestrial species evolve toward optima with shorter hindlimbs. Moreover, arboreal, semi-aquatic and torrent anurans have higher jumping performance and longer hindlimbs, when compared to terrestrial and fossorial species. We corroborate the hypothesis that evolutionary modifications of overall limb morphology have been important in the diversification of locomotor performance along the anuran phylogeny. Such evolutionary changes converged in different phylogenetic groups adapted to similar microhabitat use in two different zoogeographical regions.
形态学、性能、行为和生态学之间的关系为多种复杂的表型适应提供了证据。例如，无尾两栖类的身体结构在进化上是保守的，至少从侏罗纪早期就显示出对跳跃性能的明显特化。然而，在颅后骨骼中，包括相对肢体长度，存在着最近适应栖息地多样性的实例。本研究测试了与巴西和澳大利亚无尾两栖类物种微生境利用（半水生、树栖、穴居、急流和陆地）多样性相关的无尾两栖类形态进化的适应性模型。我们使用系统发育比较方法来确定哪些进化模型，包括布朗运动（BM）和奥恩斯坦-乌伦贝克（OU）模型，与在无尾两栖类物种中观察到的形态变异一致。此外，本研究调查了最大跳跃距离与形态变量组成部分和微生境利用之间的关系。我们发现，与不同微生境相关的肢体长度存在多个最优值，急流、树栖、半水生物种的后肢有增加的趋势，而穴居和陆生物种则朝着后肢较短的最优值进化。此外，与陆生物种和穴居物种相比，树栖、半水生和急流无尾两栖类具有更高的跳跃性能和更长的后肢。我们证实了这样一个假设，即整体肢体形态的进化改变在无尾两栖类系统发育过程中运动性能的多样化中起着重要作用。这种进化变化在不同的系统发育群体中趋同，这些群体适应于两个不同动物地理区域中相似的微生境利用。
