Dietary specialization is linked to reduced species durations in North American fossil canids

Royal Society Open Science
Mairin BalisiBlaire Van Valkenburgh

Abstract

How traits influence species persistence is a fundamental question in ecology, evolution and palaeontology. We test the relationship between dietary traits and both species duration and locality coverage over 40 million years in North American canids, a clade with considerable ecomorphological disparity and a dense fossil record. Because ecomorphological generalization-broad resource use-may enable species to withstand disturbance, we predicted that canids of average size and mesocarnivory would exhibit longer durations and wider distributions than specialized larger or smaller species. Second, because locality coverage might reflect dispersal ability and/or survivability in a range of habitats, we predicted that high coverage would correspond with longer durations. We find a nonlinear relationship between species duration and degree of carnivory: species at either end of the carnivory spectrum tend to have shorter durations than mesocarnivores. Locality coverage shows no relationship with size, diet or duration. To test whether generalization (medium size, mesocarnivory) corresponds to an adaptive optimum, we fit trait evolution models to previously generated canid phylogenies. Our analyses identify no single optimum in size o...Continue Reading

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Citations

Sep 12, 2019·Evolution & Development·David Jablonski
Sep 25, 2019·Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America·Fabien L CondamineGuillaume Guinot
Aug 23, 2020·Communications Biology·Mairin A Balisi, Blaire Van Valkenburgh

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Methods Mentioned

BETA
PCA

Software Mentioned

maxLocCover
PyRate
R package quantreg
phytools
Python
R package phytools
R package geiger
R function
R package nlme

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