Journal ArticleDOI
Ecological Specialization in Fossil Mammals Explains Cope’s Rule
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TLDR
An explicit and phylogenetically informed analysis of body size evolution in Cenozoic mammals shows that body size increases significantly in most inclusive clades, and significant pulses in origination of large-sized species are concentrated in periods of global cooling.Abstract:
Cope's rule is the trend toward increasing body size in a lineage over geological time. The rule has been explained either as passive diffusion away from a small initial body size or as an active trend upheld by the ecological and evolutionary advantages that large body size confers. An explicit and phylogenetically informed analysis of body size evolution in Cenozoic mammals shows that body size increases significantly in most inclusive clades. This increase occurs through temporal substitution of incumbent species by larger-sized close relatives within the clades. These late-appearing species have smaller spatial and temporal ranges and are rarer than the incumbents they replace, traits that are typical of ecological specialists. Cope's rule, accordingly, appears to derive mainly from increasing ecological specialization and clade-level niche expansion rather than from active selection for larger size. However, overlain on a net trend toward average size increase, significant pulses in origination of large-sized species are concentrated in periods of global cooling. These pulses plausibly record direct selection for larger body size according to Bergmann's rule, which thus appears to be independent of but concomitant with Cope's.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
Diversity in time and space: wanted dead and alive.
Susanne A. Fritz,Jan Schnitzler,Jussi T. Eronen,Christian Hof,Katrin Böhning-Gaese,Catherine H. Graham,Catherine H. Graham +6 more
TL;DR: This framework provides conceptual guidelines for combining paleontological and neontological perspectives to unravel the fundamental processes shaping life on Earth.
Journal ArticleDOI
Adaptive evolution toward larger size in mammals
TL;DR: An overwhelming tendency for rapid morphological change to lead to larger body size in 10 of the 11 largest mammal orders is demonstrated, suggesting that mammals have consistently evolved toward larger size, most likely as a response to selection pressure.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Origin of the Fittest
TL;DR: The Origin of the Fittest: Essays on Evolution as mentioned in this paper is a collection of essays written by E. D. Cope, originally published from time to time as independent lectures or articles in journals, and republished in the form of a book, apparently without any revision, and certainly without any such revision as would have been required to constitute them a connected treatise.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evolution of Neogene Mammals in Eurasia: Environmental Forcing and Biotic Interactions
Mikael Fortelius,Jussi T. Eronen,Ferhat Kaya,Hui Tang,Pasquale Raia,Kai Puolamäki,Kai Puolamäki +6 more
TL;DR: It is suggested that species with evolutionary novelties arise predominantly in “species factories” that develop under harsh environmental conditions, under dominant physical forcing, whereas exceptionally mild environments give rise to “oases in the desert,” characterized by strong competition and survival of relics.
Journal ArticleDOI
The macroevolutionary relationship between diet and body mass across mammals
TL;DR: Use of generalized Ornstein–Uhlenbeck models and data on over 1350 species of mammal reveal that evolutionary changes in body mass are consistently associated with dietary changes across mammals, and that herbivores are substantially heavier than other dietary groups and that omnivore are frequently intermediate in mass between herbivore and carnivores.
References
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Journal ArticleDOI
Trends, Rhythms, and Aberrations in Global Climate 65 Ma to Present
TL;DR: This work focuses primarily on the periodic and anomalous components of variability over the early portion of this era, as constrained by the latest generation of deep-sea isotope records.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the Relationship between Abundance and Distribution of Species
TL;DR: The general relationships between abundance and distribution developed here eventually should contribute to the understanding of the biogeography, population genetics, and evolution of species as well as the ecological attributes of populations and communities.
Journal ArticleDOI
On the validity of Bergmann's rule
Shai Meiri,Tamar Dayan +1 more
TL;DR: The occurrence of Bergmann's rule in birds and mammals is reviewed, using only studies where statistical significance of the results was tested, to test whether sedentary birds conform to the rule more than migratory birds.
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