Department of Biology and Biotechnologies "Charles Darwin,", University of Rome "La Sapienza,", Rome, 00185, Italy.
Museum of Zoology, Sapienza Museum Centre, University of Rome "La Sapienza,", Rome, 00185, Italy.
Evolution. 2021 Jul;75(7):1738-1752. doi: 10.1111/evo.14229. Epub 2021 May 7.
Convergence consists in the independent evolution of similar traits in distantly related species. The mammalian craniomandibular complex constitutes an ideal biological structure to investigate ecomorphological dynamics and the carnivorans, due to their phenotypic variability and ecological flexibility, offer an interesting case study to explore the occurrence of convergent evolution. Here, we applied multiple pattern-based metrics to test the occurrence of convergence in the craniomandibular shape of extant carnivorans. To this aim, we tested for convergence in many dietary groups and analyzed several cases of carnivoran convergence concerning either ecologically equivalent species or ecologically similar species of different body sizes described in the literature. Our results validate the occurrence of convergence in ecologically equivalent species in a few cases (as well as in the case of giant and red pandas), but almost never support the occurrence of convergent evolution in dietary categories of living carnivorans. Therefore, convergent evolution in this clade appears to be a rare phenomenon. This is probably the consequence of a complex interplay of one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many relationships taking place between ecology, biomechanics, and morphology.
趋同进化是指在远缘物种中独立进化出相似的特征。哺乳动物的颅颌复合体是研究生态形态动态的理想生物结构，而食肉动物由于其表型变异性和生态灵活性，提供了一个有趣的案例研究，以探索趋同进化的发生。在这里，我们应用了多种基于模式的度量方法来检验现生食肉动物颅颌形状趋同进化的发生。为此，我们检验了许多饮食组的趋同进化，并分析了文献中描述的几种关于生态等价物种或生态相似但体型不同的食肉动物趋同进化的情况。我们的结果验证了在少数情况下（以及在巨熊猫和小熊猫的情况下）生态等价物种中趋同进化的发生，但几乎从未支持在现存食肉动物的饮食类群中发生趋同进化。因此，在这个分支中，趋同进化似乎是一种罕见的现象。这可能是生态、生物力学和形态之间发生一对一、多对一和多对多关系的复杂相互作用的结果。
