ArticleNature communications2024
Small body size is associated with increased evolutionary lability of wing skeleton proportions in birds.
Article in Nature communications, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Body mass evolution as a driver of morphological and ecological diversity in terrestrial mammals.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Macroevolutionary integration underlies limb modularity in the origin of avian flight.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Unidirectional airflow, air sacs or the horizontal septum: what does it take to make a bird lung?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2025Review
- Toward a Comprehensive Anatomical Matrix for Crown Birds: Phylogenetic Insights from the Pectoral Girdle and Forelimb Skeleton.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Evolutionary integration of forelimb and hindlimb proportions within the bat wing membrane inhibits ecological adaptation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- Anatomical description of neornithine stomach with implications on neornithine stomach morphology.Journal of anatomy · 2024Article
- Shell Constraints on Evolutionary Body Size-Limb Size Allometry Can Explain Morphological Conservatism in the Turtle Body Plan.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Birds are represented by 11,000 species and a great variety of body masses. Modular organisation of trait evolution across birds has facilitated simultaneous adaptation of different body regions to divergent ecological requirements. However, the role modularity has played in avian body size evolution, especially small-bodied, rapidly evolving and diverse avian subclades, such as hummingbirds and songbirds, is unknown. Modularity is influenced by the intersection of biomechanical restrictions, adaptation, and developmental controls, making it difficult to uncover the contributions of single factors such as body mass to skeletal organisation. We develop a novel framework to decompose this complexity, assessing factors underlying the modularity of skeletal proportions in fore-limb propelled birds distributed across a range of body masses. We demonstrate that differences in body size across birds triggers a modular reorganisation of flight apparatus proportions consistent with biomechanical expectations. We suggest weakened integration within the wing facilitates radiation in small birds. Our framework is generalisable to other groups and has the capacity to untangle the multi-layered complexity intrinsic to modular evolution.
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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.