Evolutionary shifts in extant mustelid (Mustelidae: Carnivora) cranial shape, body size and body shape coincide with the Mid-Miocene Climate Transition.

ABSTRACT: Environmental changes can lead to evolutionary shifts in phenotypic traits, which in turn facilitate the exploitation of novel adaptive landscapes and lineage diversification. The global cooling, increased aridity and expansion of open grasslands during the past 50 Myr are prime examples of new adaptive landscapes that spurred lineage and ecomorphological diversity of several mammalian lineages such as rodents and large herbivorous megafauna. However, whether these environmental changes facilitated evolutionary shifts in small- to mid-sized predator morphology is unknown. Here, I used a complete cranial and body morphological dataset to examine the timing of evolutionary shifts in cranial shape, body size and body shape within extant mustelids (martens, otters, polecats and weasels) during

SUBMITTER: Law CJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6548733 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature