Sexual maturity and shape development in cranial appendages of extant ruminants.

ABSTRACT: Morphological disparity arises through changes in the ontogeny of structures; however, a major challenge of studying the effect of development on shape is the difficulty of collecting time series of data for large numbers of taxa. A proxy for developmental series proposed here is the age at sexual maturity, a developmental milestone potentially tied to the development of structures with documented use in intrasexual competition, such as cranial appendages in Artiodactyla. This study tested the hypothesis that ruminant cranial appendage shape and size correlate with onset of sexual maturity, predicting that late sexual maturity would correlate with larger, more complicated cranial appendages. Published data for cranial appendage shape and size in extant taxa were tested for correlations wit

SUBMITTER: Calamari ZT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6093164 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature