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13 - Tiptoeing through the trophics: geographic variation in carnivoran locomotor ecomorphology in relation to environment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2014

By
P. David Polly
Edited by
Anjali Goswami  and
Anthony Friscia
P. David Polly
Affiliation:
Indiana University
Anjali Goswami
Affiliation:
University College London
Anthony Friscia
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Summary

Introduction

How do communities and species respond to environmental change? For the palaeontologist, the answer to this question is key to addressing its converse: how can we measure palaeoenvironmental change from fossil species and assemblages? This paper examines the association between community-level carnivoran locomotor morphology and climatic parameters to determine whether the average locomotor habits of carnivoran communities are associated closely enough with vegetation cover, topography, and related climatic factors to be used as an independent estimator of palaeoenvironment.

Community-level morphology has the potential to be a powerful indicator of climate. When a particular morphological feature mediates between an organism and its environment – the structure of the foot in relation to the substrate, for example – the average morphology of that feature can be expected to follow whatever environmental gradient is most closely associated with its function (Valverde, 1964; Fortelius et al., 2002). Such a distribution will arise by the effects of climate on individual species, either through local adaptation (evolution by natural selection), by geographic range sorting (migration to more palatable regions), by extinction (Hughes, 2000; Lister, 2004; Davis et al., 2005), or by the interaction of adaptation and range changes (Holt, 2003). All three kinds of species-level change will affect the community's composition and, therefore, the mean morphology of the community. The cumulative effect of climate on the community's mean morphology is likely to be more predictable than the effect on any one species.

Type
Chapter
Information
Carnivoran Evolution
New Views on Phylogeny, Form and Function
 , pp. 374 - 410
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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