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Species level phenotypic variation in lower Paleozoic trilobites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 February 2016

Loren H. Smith
Loren H. Smith*
Affiliation:
Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
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Abstract

Phenotypic variation within species provides the raw material acted upon by natural selection and other evolutionary mechanisms. As such, the range and variation of morphology within a species can play an important role in determining the tempo of evolution. The range and variance of aspects of cranidial morphology for nine lower Paleozoic trilobites were measured to identify microevolutionary correlates of macroevolutionary patterns. Comparisons were made among sets of homologous landmarks or upon partial warp vector matrices containing similar proportions of variance. Rarefaction and bootstrap analyses helped estimate the effects of sampling. Levels of variance and range of morphology differed considerably within and among time periods. There is no significant temporal decline in the variance or range of morphology, suggesting that developmental or genomic constraints may not have been the primary factors controlling the tempo of trilobite macroevolution. The spatial distribution of cranidial variance differed considerably among taxa, suggesting that a complex set of developmental processes governed the morphogenesis of cranidia within trilobites.

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Articles
Information
Paleobiology , Volume 24 , Issue 1 , Winter 1998 , pp. 17 - 36
Copyright
Copyright © The Paleontological Society 

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References

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