Body size evolution in extant Oryzomyini rodents: Cope's rule or miniaturization?

ABSTRACT: At the macroevolutionary level, one of the first and most important hypotheses that proposes an evolutionary tendency in the evolution of body sizes is "Cope's rule". This rule has considerable empirical support in the fossil record and predicts that the size of species within a lineage increases over evolutionary time. Nevertheless, there is also a large amount of evidence indicating the opposite pattern of miniaturization over evolutionary time. A recent analysis using a single phylogenetic tree approach and a bayesian based model of evolution found no evidence for Cope's rule in extant mammal species. Here we utilize a likelihood-based phylogenetic method, to test the evolutionary trend in body size, which considers phylogenetic uncertainty, to discern between Cope's rule and miniaturiz

SUBMITTER: Avaria-Llautureo J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3318010 | biostudies-literature | 2012

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature