ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2014
Fast running restricts evolutionary change of the vertebral column in mammals.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 30 papers.
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Who cites it
30 citing papers in PubMed, 90 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Ecological Inference From Isolated Vertebrae: Evaluating Functional Signal Across the Carnivoran Spine.Journal of morphology · 2026Article
- Evolvability in vertebrate segmentation.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2025Review
- Neuroanatomical and neurochemical atlas of the spiny mouse (Acomys cahirinus) spinal cord.Brain structure & function · 2025Article
- Does fast running limit numerical variability of the vertebral column in rabbits and hares (Leporidae: Lagomorpha)?Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Homeotic and nonhomeotic patterns in the tetrapod vertebral formula.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Increased incidences of cervical ribs in deer indicate extinction risk.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Small- to medium-sized mammals show greater morphological disparity in cervical than lumbar vertebrae across different terrestrial modes of locomotion.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Transitional, fused and/or supernumerary vertebrae in the lumbosacrocaudal region of the spine - A reality in many domestic mammals.Veterinarni medicina · 2024Article
- Morphologic and mechanical adaptive variations inVeterinary world · 2024Article
- Divergent vertebral formulae shape the evolution of axial complexity in mammals.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Turtle Shell Kinesis Underscores Constraints and Opportunities in the Evolution of the Vertebrate Musculoskeletal System.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Review
- Breaking the constraint on the number of cervical vertebrae in mammals: On homeotic transformations in lorises and pottos.Evolution & development · 2022Article
- Regulation of posterior Hox genes by sex steroids explains vertebral variation in inbred mouse strains.Journal of anatomy · 2022Review
- The Core Concepts, Competencies, and Grand Challenges of Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy and Morphology.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2022Article
- Radiographic evaluation of congenital vertebral anomalies in Korean raccoon dogs (Journal of veterinary science · 2021Article
- Article
- Vertebral Formulae and Congenital Vertebral Anomalies in Guinea Pigs: A Retrospective Radiographic Study.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The mammalian vertebral column is highly variable, reflecting adaptations to a wide range of lifestyles, from burrowing in moles to flying in bats. However, in many taxa, the number of trunk vertebrae is surprisingly constant. We argue that this constancy results from strong selection against initial changes of these numbers in fast running and agile mammals, whereas such selection is weak in slower-running, sturdier mammals. The rationale is that changes of the number of trunk vertebrae require homeotic transformations from trunk into sacral vertebrae, or vice versa, and mutations toward such transformations generally produce transitional lumbosacral vertebrae that are incompletely fused to the sacrum. We hypothesize that such incomplete homeotic transformations impair flexibility of the lumbosacral joint and thereby threaten survival in species that depend on axial mobility for speed and agility. Such transformations will only marginally affect performance in slow, sturdy species, so that sufficient individuals with transitional vertebrae survive to allow eventual evolutionary changes of trunk vertebral numbers. We present data on fast and slow carnivores and artiodactyls and on slow afrotherians and monotremes that strongly support this hypothesis. The conclusion is that the selective constraints on the count of trunk vertebrae stem from a combination of developmental and biomechanical constraints.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.