ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
Fossils and living taxa agree on patterns of body mass evolution: a case study with Afrotheria.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Extensive longevity and DNA virus-driven adaptation in nearcticbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Rapid evolution of genes with anti-cancer functions during the origins of large bodies and cancer resistance in elephants.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Improved mammalian family phylogeny using gap-rare multiple sequence alignment: A timetree of extant placentals and marsupials.Zoological research · 2023Article
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- How to Make a Rodent Giant: Genomic Basis and Tradeoffs of Gigantism in the Capybara, the World's Largest Rodent.Molecular biology and evolution · 2021Article
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- Inactivation of thermogenic UCP1 as a historical contingency in multiple placental mammal clades.Science advances · 2017Article
- Partially incorrect fossil data augment analyses of discrete trait evolution in living species.Biology letters · 2016Article
- Dating placentalia: Morphological clocks fail to close the molecular fossil gap.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2016Article
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2 authors.
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Abstract
Most of life is extinct, so incorporating some fossil evidence into analyses of macroevolution is typically seen as necessary to understand the diversification of life and patterns of morphological evolution. Here we test the effects of inclusion of fossils in a study of the body size evolution of afrotherian mammals, a clade that includes the elephants, sea cows and elephant shrews. We find that the inclusion of fossil tips has little impact on analyses of body mass evolution; from a small ancestral size (approx. 100 g), there is a shift in rate and an increase in mass leading to the larger-bodied Paenungulata and Tubulidentata, regardless of whether fossils are included or excluded from analyses. For Afrotheria, the inclusion of fossils and morphological character data affect phylogenetic topology, but these differences have little impact upon patterns of body mass evolution and these body mass evolutionary patterns are consistent with the fossil record. The largest differences between our analyses result from the evolutionary model, not the addition of fossils. For some clades, extant-only analyses may be reliable to reconstruct body mass evolution, but the addition of fossils and careful model selection is likely to increase confidence and accuracy of reconstructed macroevolutionary patterns.
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