ArticleRoyal Society open science2017
Morphology captures diet and locomotor types in rodents.
Article in Royal Society open science, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 27 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
27 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Progress in the Use of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cell-Derived Neural Cells for Traumatic Spinal Cord Injuries in Animal Populations: Meta-Analysis and Review.Stem cells translational medicine · 2019Pooled it
- Scratching beneath the surface: Quantification of muscle architecture and myosin heavy chain content in the forelimbs of black-tailed prairie dogs (Cynomys, Rodentia).Journal of anatomy · 2026Article
- Interspecific diversity in the neuronal composition of the mammalian cortex arises from heterochrony in neurogenesis.The EMBO journal · 2026Article
- Naturalistic climbing reveals adaptive strategies for interlimb coordination in freely moving mice.iScience · 2026Article
- Body size and cranial shape differentiation in urban and rural house mice (bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Semicircular canal morphology in Rodentia and its relationship to locomotion.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Discriminating footprints to improve identification of congeneric invasive Rattus species.Pest management science · 2025Article
- Developmental trajectories in laryngeal anatomy of California mice (Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Shearing Tooth Morphology May Allow Sharks to Access Higher Trophic Levels at Smaller Sizes.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Desert landscape features influencing the microgeographic genetic structure of Nelson's pocket mouse Chaetodipus nelsoni.Heredity · 2025Article
- Endocranial shape variation and allometry in Euarchontoglires.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Comparative analysis of optional hunting behavior in Cricetinae hamsters using the data compression approach.Frontiers in zoology · 2024Article
- The better to eat you with: morphological disparity and enamel ultrastructure in odontocetes.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Multivariate analyses of skull morphology inform the taxonomy and evolution of geomyoid rodents.Current zoology · 2023Article
- Article
- The oldest semi-aquatic beaver in the world and a new hypothesis for the evolution of locomotion in Castoridae.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Ecological correlates of the morphology of the auditory bulla in rodents: Application to the fossil record.Journal of anatomy · 2022Article
- Tail Length Evolution in Deer Mice: Linking Morphology, Behavior, and Function.Integrative and comparative biology · 2021Article
- Phylogeny and foraging behaviour shape modular morphological variation in bat humeri.Journal of anatomy · 2021Article
- A gravity-based three-dimensional compass in the mouse brain.Nature communications · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
To understand the functional meaning of morphological features, we need to relate what we know about morphology and ecology in a meaningful, quantitative framework. Closely related species usually share more phenotypic features than distant ones, but close relatives do not necessarily have the same ecologies. Rodents are the most diverse group of living mammals, with impressive ecomorphological diversification. We used museum collections and ecological literature to gather data on morphology, diet and locomotion for 208 species of rodents from different bioregions to investigate how morphological similarity and phylogenetic relatedness are associated with ecology. After considering differences in body size and shared evolutionary history, we find that unrelated species with similar ecologies can be characterized by a well-defined suite of morphological features. Our results validate the hypothesized ecological relevance of the chosen traits. These cranial, dental and external (e.g. ears) characters predicted diet and locomotion and showed consistent differences among species with different feeding and substrate use strategies. We conclude that when ecological characters do not show strong phylogenetic patterns, we cannot simply assume that close relatives are ecologically similar. Museum specimens are valuable records of species' phenotypes and with the characters proposed here, morphology can reflect functional similarity, an important component of community ecology and macroevolution.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.