The role of clade competition in the diversification of North American canids.

ABSTRACT: The history of biodiversity is characterized by a continual replacement of branches in the tree of life. The rise and demise of these branches (clades) are ultimately determined by changes in speciation and extinction rates, often interpreted as a response to varying abiotic and biotic factors. However, understanding the relative importance of these factors remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Here we analyze the rich North American fossil record of the dog family Canidae and of other carnivores to tease apart the roles of competition, body size evolution, and climate change on the sequential replacement of three canid subfamilies (two of which have gone extinct). We develop a novel Bayesian analytic framework to show that competition from multiple carnivore clades successive

SUBMITTER: Silvestro D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4507235 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature