Department of Evolutionary Biology, Ecology and Environmental Sciences (BEECA), University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Department of Archaeology, University of York, York, UK.
Anat Rec (Hoboken). 2021 Mar;304(3):480-506. doi: 10.1002/ar.24453. Epub 2020 Jun 10.
Here, I study whether locomotor adaptations can be detected in limb bones using a univariate approach, and whether those results are affected by size and/or shared evolutionary history. Ultimately, it tests whether classical papers on locomotor adaptations should be trusted. To do that, I analyzed the effect of several factors (size, taxonomic group, and locomotor habit) on limb bone morphology using a set of 43 measurements of the scapula, long bones, and calcaneus, of 435 specimens belonging to 143 carnivoran species. Size was the main factor affecting limb morphology. Size-corrected analyses revealed artifactual differences between various locomotion-related categories in the analyses of raw data. Additionally, several between-group differences were new to the size-corrected analyses, suggesting that they were masked by the size-effect. Phylogeny had also an important effect, although it only became apparent after removing the effect of size, probably due to the strong covariation of both factors. Regarding locomotor adaptations, locomotor type was used to represent locomotor specialization, and utilized habitat as an indicator of the capacity to adopt different modes of locomotion (running, swimming, climbing, and digging) and thus maximize resource exploitation by being capable of navigating all the substrates in the habitat they use. Locomotor type produced better results than utilized habitat, suggesting that carnivorans use locomotor specialization to minimize locomotion costs. The characteristic limb bone morphology for each locomotor type studied is described, including several adaptations and trends that are novel to the present study. Finally, the results presented here support the hypothesis of a "viverrid-like", forest-dwelling carnivoran ancestor, either arboreal or terrestrial.
在这里，我使用单变量方法研究了运动适应性是否可以在肢体骨骼中检测到，以及这些结果是否受到大小和/或共同进化历史的影响。最终，它测试了关于运动适应性的经典论文是否值得信赖。为此，我分析了几个因素（大小、分类群和运动习惯）对肩胛骨、长骨和跟骨的形态的影响，使用了 43 种测量方法，对属于 143 种食肉动物物种的 435 个标本进行了分析。大小是影响肢体形态的主要因素。大小校正分析揭示了在原始数据分析中，各种与运动相关的类别之间存在人为差异。此外，在大小校正分析中，几个组间差异是新的，表明它们被大小效应所掩盖。尽管在去除大小效应后，系统发育才变得明显，但它也有重要影响，这可能是由于这两个因素的强烈共变。关于运动适应性，运动类型用于代表运动专业化，而栖息地用于表示采用不同运动模式（跑步、游泳、攀爬和挖掘）的能力，从而通过能够在其使用的栖息地中导航所有基质来最大限度地利用资源。运动类型的结果优于利用栖息地的结果，表明食肉动物利用运动专业化来最小化运动成本。描述了每种研究运动类型的特征肢体骨骼形态，包括一些适应和趋势，这些适应和趋势是本研究中首次提出的。最后，这里提出的结果支持了一个“食蚁狸样”、森林栖息的食肉动物祖先的假说，无论是树栖还是陆生。
