ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Constraint, natural selection, and the evolution of human body form.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
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14 citing papers in PubMed, 83 citations in OpenAlex.
- Multifactorial drivers of spatial variation in human body form across modern China.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Natural selection, genetic drift, and trait correlation shaped hominin midfoot evolution.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires?American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Review
- Socio-cultural practices may have affected sex differences in stature in Early Neolithic Europe.Nature human behaviour · 2024Article
- Article
- Metamorphosis Imposes Variable Constraints on Genome Expansion through Effects on Development.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
- Skull variation in Afro-Eurasian monkeys results from both adaptive and non-adaptive evolutionary processes.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- The obstetrical dilemma hypothesis: there's life in the old dog yet.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2021Article
- Quercus species divergence is driven by natural selection on evolutionarily less integrated traits.Heredity · 2021Article
- A novel system for classifying tooth root phenotypes.PloS one · 2021Article
- Human adaptation over the past 40,000 years.Current opinion in genetics & development · 2020Review
- Genetic contributions to variation in human stature in prehistoric Europe.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Nasal airflow simulations suggest convergent adaptation in Neanderthals and modern humans.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Intense natural selection preceded the invasion of new adaptive zones during the radiation of New World leaf-nosed bats.Scientific reports · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Variation in body form among human groups is structured by a blend of natural selection driven by local climatic conditions and random genetic drift. However, attempts to test ecogeographic hypotheses have not distinguished between adaptive traits (i.e., those that evolved as a result of selection) and those that evolved as a correlated response to selection on other traits (i.e., nonadaptive traits), complicating our understanding of the relationship between climate and morphological distinctions among populations. Here, we use evolutionary quantitative methods to test if traits previously identified as supporting ecogeographic hypotheses were actually adaptive by estimating the force of selection on individual traits needed to drive among-group differentiation. Our results show that not all associations between trait means and latitude were caused by selection acting directly on each individual trait. Although radial and tibial length and biiliac and femoral head breadth show signs of responses to directional selection matching ecogeographic hypotheses, the femur was subject to little or no directional selection despite having shorter values by latitude. Additionally, in contradiction to ecogeographic hypotheses, the humerus was under directional selection for longer values by latitude. Responses to directional selection in the tibia and radius induced a nonadaptive correlated response in the humerus that overwhelmed its own trait-specific response to selection. This result emphasizes that mean differences between groups are not good indicators of which traits are adaptations in the absence of information about covariation among characteristics.
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