Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Modern whales are frequently described as an adaptive radiation spurred by either the evolution of various key innovations (such as baleen or echolocation) or ecological opportunity following the demise of archaic whales. Recent analyses of diversification rate shifts on molecular phylogenies raise doubts about this interpretation since they find no evidence of increased speciation rates during the early evolution of modern taxa. However, one of the central predictions of ecological adaptive radiation is rapid phenotypic diversification, and the tempo of phenotypic evolution has yet to be quantified in cetaceans. Using a time-calibrated molecular phylogeny of extant cetaceans and a morphological dataset on size, we find evidence that cetacean lineages partitioned size niches early in the evolutionary history of neocetes and that changes in cetacean size are consistent with shifts in dietary strategy. We conclude that the signature of adaptive radiations may be retained within morphological traits even after equilibrium diversity has been reached and high extinction or fluctuations in net diversification have erased any signature of an early burst of diversification in the structure of the phylogeny.
Language: English
Subfield: Paleontology
Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Awards: Dissertation Research: Performance of the Skull of Canidae during Predation and Feeding, and Implications for the Evolution of Craniofacial Form: A Finite Element Approach, G3712952848, Systematics and Influence of Coral Reefs on Diversification in Tetraodontiform Fishes, Collaborative Research: Tempo and Mode of Diversification In Vertebrates, CSBE: A Place for Evolutionary Synthesis in North Carolina's Research Triangle
OpenAlex ID: W2102641709