Name:
Publisher version
View Source
Access full-text PDFOpen Access
View Source
Check access options
Check access options
Average rating
Cast your vote
You can rate an item by clicking the amount of stars they wish to award to
this item.
When enough users have cast their vote on this item, the average rating will also be shown.
Star rating
Your vote was cast
Thank you for your feedback
Thank you for your feedback
Issue date
2023-03-28Submitted date
2022-09-07Subject Terms
macroevolutioncetaceans
body size
adaptive landscape
phenotypic evolution
Ornstein-Uhlenbeck
fabric model
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Adaptive landscapes are central to evolutionary theory, forming a conceptual bridge between micro- and macroevolution.<sup>1</sup><sup>,</sup><sup>2</sup><sup>,</sup><sup>3</sup><sup>,</sup><sup>4</sup> Evolution by natural selection across an adaptive landscape should drive lineages toward fitness peaks, shaping the distribution of phenotypic variation within and among clades over evolutionary timescales.<sup>5</sup> The location and breadth of these peaks in phenotypic space can also evolve,<sup>4</sup> but whether phylogenetic comparative methods can detect such patterns has largely remained unexplored.<sup>6</sup> Here, we characterize the global and local adaptive landscape for total body length in cetaceans (whales, dolphins, and relatives), a trait that spans an order of magnitude, across their ∼53-million-year evolutionary history. Using phylogenetic comparative methods, we analyze shifts in long-term mean body length<sup>7</sup> and directional changes in average trait values<sup>8</sup> for 345 living and fossil cetacean taxa. Remarkably, we find that the global macroevolutionary adaptive landscape of cetacean body length is relatively flat, with very few peak shifts occurring after cetaceans entered the oceans. Local peaks are more numerous and manifest as trends along branches linked to specific adaptations. These results contrast with previous studies using only extant taxa,<sup>9</sup> highlighting the vital role of fossil data for understanding macroevolution.<sup>10</sup><sup>,</sup><sup>11</sup><sup>,</sup><sup>12</sup> Our results indicate that adaptive peaks are dynamic and are associated with subzones of local adaptations, creating moving targets for species adaptation. In addition, we identify limits in our ability to detect some evolutionary patterns and processes and suggest that multiple approaches are required to characterize complex hierarchical patterns of adaptation in deep time.Citation
Burin, G. et al. (2023) ‘The dynamic adaptive landscape of cetacean body size’, Current Biology, 33(9). doi:10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.014.Publisher
Elsevier BVJournal
Current BiologyType
Journal ArticleItem Description
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. 1787 This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The linked document is the published version of the article.NHM Repository
ISSN
0960-9822EISSN
1879-0445ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1016/j.cub.2023.03.014
Scopus Count
Collections