Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW 2109, Australia;
Zoological Institute and Museum, University of Greifswald, 17489 Greifswald, Germany.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2021 Aug 17;118(33). doi: 10.1073/pnas.2102693118.
Do animals set the course for the evolution of their lineage when manipulating their environment? This heavily disputed question is empirically unexplored but critical to interpret phenotypic diversity. Here, we tested whether the macroevolutionary rates of body morphology correlate with the use of built artifacts in a megadiverse clade comprising builders and nonbuilders-spiders. By separating the inferred building-dependent rates from background effects, we found that variation in the evolution of morphology is poorly explained by artifact use. Thus natural selection acting directly on body morphology rather than indirectly via construction behavior is the dominant driver of phenotypic diversity.
当动物操纵环境时，它们会为自身谱系的进化设定方向吗？这个备受争议的问题尚未得到实证研究，但对于解释表型多样性至关重要。在这里，我们测试了在一个包含建造者和非建造者（蜘蛛）的巨大多样性类群中，身体形态的宏进化率是否与建筑制品的使用有关。通过将推断的依赖于建筑的速率与背景效应分离，我们发现形态进化的变异不能很好地用制品使用来解释。因此，直接作用于身体形态的自然选择而不是通过建筑行为间接作用于身体形态的自然选择，是表型多样性的主要驱动因素。
