Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- 1 Rodentia: a model order?
- 2 A synopsis of rodent molecular phylogenetics, systematics and biogeography
- 3 Emerging perspectives on some Paleogene sciurognath rodents in Laurasia: the fossil record and its interpretation
- 4 Phylogeny and evolutionary history of hystricognathous rodents from the Old World during the Tertiary: new insights into the emergence of modern “phiomorph” families
- 5 The history of South American octodontoid rodents and its contribution to evolutionary generalisations
- 6 History, taxonomy and palaeobiology of giant fossil rodents (Hystricognathi, Dinomyidae)
- 7 Advances in integrative taxonomy and evolution of African murid rodents: how morphological trees hide the molecular forest
- 8 Themes and variation in sciurid evolution
- 9 Marmot evolution and global change in the past 10 million years
- 10 Grades and clades among rodents: the promise of geometric morphometrics
- 11 Biogeographic variations in wood mice: testing for the role of morphological variation as a line of least resistance to evolution
- 12 The oral apparatus of rodents: variations on the theme of a gnawing machine
- 13 The muscles of mastication in rodents and the function of the medial pterygoid
- 14 Functional morphology of rodent middle ears
- 15 Variations and anomalies in rodent teeth and their importance for testing computational models of development
- 16 The great variety of dental structures and dynamics in rodents: new insights into their ecological diversity
- 17 Convergent evolution of molar topography in Muroidea (Rodentia, Mammalia): connections between chewing movements and crown morphology
- 18 Developmental mechanisms in the evolution of phenotypic traits in rodent teeth
- 19 Diversity and evolution of femoral variation in Ctenohystrica
- 20 Morphological disparity of the postcranial skeleton in rodents and its implications for palaeobiological inferences: the case of the extinct Theridomyidae (Rodentia, Mammalia)
- Index
- References
19 - Diversity and evolution of femoral variation in Ctenohystrica
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2015
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Foreword
- 1 Rodentia: a model order?
- 2 A synopsis of rodent molecular phylogenetics, systematics and biogeography
- 3 Emerging perspectives on some Paleogene sciurognath rodents in Laurasia: the fossil record and its interpretation
- 4 Phylogeny and evolutionary history of hystricognathous rodents from the Old World during the Tertiary: new insights into the emergence of modern “phiomorph” families
- 5 The history of South American octodontoid rodents and its contribution to evolutionary generalisations
- 6 History, taxonomy and palaeobiology of giant fossil rodents (Hystricognathi, Dinomyidae)
- 7 Advances in integrative taxonomy and evolution of African murid rodents: how morphological trees hide the molecular forest
- 8 Themes and variation in sciurid evolution
- 9 Marmot evolution and global change in the past 10 million years
- 10 Grades and clades among rodents: the promise of geometric morphometrics
- 11 Biogeographic variations in wood mice: testing for the role of morphological variation as a line of least resistance to evolution
- 12 The oral apparatus of rodents: variations on the theme of a gnawing machine
- 13 The muscles of mastication in rodents and the function of the medial pterygoid
- 14 Functional morphology of rodent middle ears
- 15 Variations and anomalies in rodent teeth and their importance for testing computational models of development
- 16 The great variety of dental structures and dynamics in rodents: new insights into their ecological diversity
- 17 Convergent evolution of molar topography in Muroidea (Rodentia, Mammalia): connections between chewing movements and crown morphology
- 18 Developmental mechanisms in the evolution of phenotypic traits in rodent teeth
- 19 Diversity and evolution of femoral variation in Ctenohystrica
- 20 Morphological disparity of the postcranial skeleton in rodents and its implications for palaeobiological inferences: the case of the extinct Theridomyidae (Rodentia, Mammalia)
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
Despite possessing a rather generalised postcranial skeleton, rodents are on average capable of a wide variety of locomotory behaviours, such as swimming, digging and climbing (Nowak, 1999). Particularly, rodents belonging to Ctenohystrica (sensu Huchon et al., 2002, and Fabre et al., 2012: Ctenodactylidae, Diatomyidae and Hystricognathi) display a diversity of locomotory styles and encompass a large range in body mass from approximately 50 g for the naked mole-rat Heterocephalus glaber to around 60 kg for the largest living rodent, the capybara Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris, consequently filling many different ecological niches (e.g. MacDonald, 2009; Wilson and Sánchez-Villagra, 2009, 2010). Moreover, this diversity is greatly expanded by the inclusion of giant extinct members such as Phoberomys, Arazamys and Josephoartigasia that reached body masses at least seven or eight times that of the capybara (Sánchez-Villagra et al., 2003; Rinderknecht and Blanco, 2008; Rinderknecht and Bostelmann, 2011). The adaptive diversity that characterises the evolution of Ctenohystrica, and particularly the Caviomorpha, a group that dispersed from Africa to colonise South America (Poux et al., 2006; Rowe et al., 2010) and evolved on that continent during a period of splendid isolation in the Cenozoic, has been the subject of numerous morpho-functional and evolutionary studies (e.g. Verzi et al., 2010; Wilson et al., 2010; Álvarez et al., 2011a, b; Hautier et al., 2011, 2012; Cox et al., 2012; Geiger et al., 2013; Wilson, 2013).
The interplay between form and function has been studied in the postcranial skeleton of a number of mammals (e.g. Kappelman, 19; Anemone, 1990;White, 1993; Vizcaíno and Milne, 2002; Kley and Kearney, 2007; Meachen-Samuels, 2010), and studies of Ctenohystrica have, for example, examined individual bones (e.g. Seckel and Janis, 2008; Morgan, 2009; Steiner-Souza et al., 2010; Elissamburu and De Santis, 2011), long bones (Biknevicius, 1993; Elissamburu and Vizcaino, 2004; Samuels and Van Valkenburgh, 2008; Morgan and Álvarez, 2013) and the autopodial skeleton (e.g. Weisbecker and Schmid, 2007; Morgan and Verzi, 2011). These studies have used morphological traits, described as ratios or quantified using biomechanical indices or geometric morphometric descriptors of shape, to identify functional specialisations and instances of adaptive convergence underpinned by shared function and/or ecology.
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- Information
- Evolution of the RodentsAdvances in Phylogeny, Functional Morphology and Development, pp. 510 - 538Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2015
References
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