ArticleNature ecology & evolution2021
Patterns of skeletal integration in birds reveal that adaptation of element shapes enables coordinated evolution between anatomical modules.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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23 citing papers in PubMed, 48 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Enlargement of sternum traits facilitated the evolution of powered flight in birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
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- Complexity and weak integration promote the diversity of reef fish oral jaws.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Cellular, Molecular, and Genetic Mechanisms of Avian Beak Development and Evolution.Annual review of genetics · 2024Review
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- Small body size is associated with increased evolutionary lability of wing skeleton proportions in birds.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Macroevolutionary drivers of morphological disparity in the avian quadrate.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Sample Size and Geometric Morphometrics Methodology Impact the Evaluation of Morphological Variation.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Uncovering the mosaic evolution of the carnivoran skeletal system.Biology letters · 2024Article
- The neck as a keystone structure in avian macroevolution and mosaicism.BMC biology · 2023Article
- Bird clades with less complex appendicular skeletons tend to have higher species richness.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Decoupling body shape and mass distribution in birds and their dinosaurian ancestors.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Morphological Covariance and Onset of Foot Prehensility as Indicators of Integrated Evolutionary Dynamics in the Herons (Ardeidae).Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2023Article
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4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Birds show tremendous ecological disparity in spite of strong biomechanical constraints imposed by flight. Modular skeletal evolution is generally accepted to have facilitated this, with distinct body regions showing semi-independent evolutionary trajectories. However, this hypothesis has received little scrutiny. We analyse evolutionary modularity and ecomorphology using three-dimensional data from across the entire skeleton in a phylogenetically broad sample of extant birds. We find strongly modular evolution of skeletal element sizes within body regions (head, trunk, forelimb and hindlimb). However, element shapes show substantially less modularity, have stronger relationships to ecology, and provide evidence that ecological adaptation involves coordinated evolution of elements across different body regions. This complicates the straightforward paradigm in which modular evolution facilitated the ecological diversification of birds. Our findings suggest the potential for undetected patterns of morphological evolution in even well-studied groups, and advance the understanding of the interface between evolutionary integration and ecomorphology.
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