SMILE

Stochastic Models for the Inference of Life Evolution

From dinosaurs to modern bird diversity: extending the time scale of adaptive radiation

Moen, D., Morlon, H.

PLoS biology

2014

What explains why some groups of organisms, like birds, are so species rich? And what explains their extraordinary ecological diversity, ranging from large, flightless birds to small migratory species that fly thousand of kilometers every year? These and similar questions have spurred great interest in adaptive radiation, the diversification of ecological traits in a rapidly speciating group of organisms. Although the initial formulation of modern concepts of adaptive radiation arose from consideration of the fossil record, rigorous attempts to identify adaptive radiation in the fossil record are still uncommon. Moreover, most studies of adaptive radiation concern groups that are less than 50 million years old. Thus, it is unclear how important adaptive radiation is over temporal scales that span much larger portions of the history of life. In this issue, Benson et al. test the idea of a "deep-time" adaptive radiation in dinosaurs, compiling and using one of the most comprehensive phylogenetic and body-size datasets for fossils. Using recent phylogenetic statistical methods, they find that in most clades of dinosaurs there is a strong signal of an "early burst" in body-size evolution, a predicted pattern of adaptive radiation in which rapid trait evolution happens early in a group's history and then slows down. They also find that body-size evolution did not slow down in the lineage leading to birds, hinting at why birds survived to the present day and diversified. This paper represents one of the most convincing attempts at understanding deep-time adaptive radiations.

Bibtex

@article{moen_dinosaurs_2014-1,
Author = {Moen, Daniel and Morlon, Hélène},
Title = {From dinosaurs to modern bird diversity: extending the
time scale of adaptive radiation},
Journal = {PLoS biology},
Volume = {12},
Number = {5},
Pages = {e1001854},
abstract = {What explains why some groups of organisms, like
birds, are so species rich? And what explains their
extraordinary ecological diversity, ranging from large,
flightless birds to small migratory species that fly
thousand of kilometers every year? These and similar
questions have spurred great interest in adaptive
radiation, the diversification of ecological traits in
a rapidly speciating group of organisms. Although the
initial formulation of modern concepts of adaptive
radiation arose from consideration of the fossil
record, rigorous attempts to identify adaptive
radiation in the fossil record are still uncommon.
Moreover, most studies of adaptive radiation concern
groups that are less than 50 million years old. Thus,
it is unclear how important adaptive radiation is over
temporal scales that span much larger portions of the
history of life. In this issue, Benson et al. test the
idea of a "deep-time" adaptive radiation in dinosaurs,
compiling and using one of the most comprehensive
phylogenetic and body-size datasets for fossils. Using
recent phylogenetic statistical methods, they find that
in most clades of dinosaurs there is a strong signal of
an "early burst" in body-size evolution, a predicted
pattern of adaptive radiation in which rapid trait
evolution happens early in a group's history and then
slows down. They also find that body-size evolution did
not slow down in the lineage leading to birds, hinting
at why birds survived to the present day and
diversified. This paper represents one of the most
convincing attempts at understanding deep-time adaptive
radiations.},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pbio.1001854},
issn = {1545-7885},
language = {eng},
month = may,
pmcid = {PMC4011673},
pmid = {24802950},
shorttitle = {From dinosaurs to modern bird diversity},
year = 2014
}

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