Functional and Character Disparity Are Decoupled in Turtle Mandibles.

ABSTRACT: Turtles have high shape variation of their mandibles, likely reflecting adaptations to a broad variety of food items and ingestion strategies. Here, we compare functional disparity measured by biomechanical proxies and character disparity measured by discrete morphological characters. Functional and character disparities vary between clades and ecological groups and are thus decoupled. Comparisons with cranial disparity also indicate decoupled patterns within the turtle skull. Exploration of mandibular patterns reveals that several biomechanical configurations or character state combinations can lead to the same feeding type (i.e., convergence) or that high functional disparity can be achieved at a low exhaustion of character state combinations (e.g., cryptodires). Dietary specialists show

SUBMITTER: Ponstein J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11560343 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature