Search

The notion that large body size confers some intrinsic advantage to biological species has been debated for centuries. Using a phylogenetic statistical approach that allows the rate of body size evolution to vary across a phylogeny, we find a long-term directional bias toward increasing size in the mammals. This pattern holds separately in 10 of 11 orders for which sufficient data are available and arises from a tendency for accelerated rates of evolution to produce increases, but not decreases, in size. On a branch-by-branch basis, increases in body size have been more than twice as likely as decreases, yielding what amounts to millions and millions of years of rapid and repeated increases in size away from the small ancestral mammal. These results are the first evidence, to our knowledge, from extant species that are compatible with Cope's rule: the pattern of body size increase through time observed in the mammalian fossil record. We show that this pattern is unlikely to be explained by several nonadaptive mechanisms for increasing size and most likely represents repeated responses to new selective circumstances. By demonstrating that it is possible to uncover ancient evolutionary trends from a combination of a phylogeny and appropriate statistical models, we illustrate how data from extant species can complement paleontological accounts of evolutionary history, opening up new avenues of investigation for both.

The radiation of the mammals provides a 165-million-year test case for evolutionary theories of how species occupy and then fill ecological niches. It is widely assumed that species often diverge rapidly early in their evolution, and that this is followed by a longer, drawn-out period of slower evolutionary fine-tuning as natural selection fits organisms into an increasingly occupied niche space. But recent studies have hinted that the process may not be so simple. Here we apply statistical methods that automatically detect temporal shifts in the rate of evolution through time to a comprehensive mammalian phylogeny and data set of body sizes of 3,185 extant species. Unexpectedly, the majority of mammal species, including two of the most speciose orders (Rodentia and Chiroptera), have no history of substantial and sustained increases in the rates of evolution. Instead, a subset of the mammals has experienced an explosive increase (between 10- and 52-fold) in the rate of evolution along the single branch leading to the common ancestor of their monophyletic group (for example Chiroptera), followed by a quick return to lower or background levels. The remaining species are a taxonomically diverse assemblage showing a significant, sustained increase or decrease in their rates of evolution. These results necessarily decouple morphological diversification from speciation and suggest that the processes that give rise to the morphological diversity of a class of animals are far more free to vary than previously considered. Niches do not seem to fill up, and diversity seems to arise whenever, wherever and at whatever rate it is advantageous., (© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved)

Life-history traits vary substantially across species, and have been demonstrated to affect substitution rates. We compute genome-wide, branch-specific estimates of male mutation bias (the ratio of male-to-female mutation rates) across 32 mammalian genomes and study how these vary with life-history traits (generation time, metabolic rate, and sperm competition). We also investigate the influence of life-history traits on substitution rates at unconstrained sites across a wide phylogenetic range. We observe that increased generation time is the strongest predictor of variation in both substitution rates (for which it is a negative predictor) and male mutation bias (for which it is a positive predictor). Although less significant, we also observe that estimates of metabolic rate, reflecting replication-independent DNA damage and repair mechanisms, correlate negatively with autosomal substitution rates, and positively with male mutation bias. Finally, in contrast to expectations, we find no significant correlation between sperm competition and either autosomal substitution rates or male mutation bias. Our results support the important but frequently opposite effects of some, but not all, life-history traits on substitution rates., (© 2011 The Author(s). Evolution© 2011 The Society for the Study of Evolution.)

A key concern for conservation biologists is whether populations of plants and animals are likely to fluctuate widely in number or remain relatively stable around some steady-state value. In our study of 634 populations of mammals, birds, fish and insects, we find that most can be expected to remain stable despite year to year fluctuations caused by environmental factors. Mean return rates were generally around one but were higher in insects (1.09 +/- 0.02 SE) and declined with body size in mammals. In general, this is good news for conservation, as stable populations are less likely to go extinct. However, the lower return rates of the large mammals may make them more vulnerable to extinction. Our estimates of return rates were generally well below the threshold for chaos, which makes it unlikely that chaotic dynamics occur in natural populations--one of ecology's key unanswered questions.

A key unresolved question in population ecology concerns the relationship between a population's size and its growth rate. We estimated this relationship for 1780 time series of mammals, birds, fish, and insects. We found that rates of population growth are high at low population densities but, contrary to previous predictions, decline rapidly with increasing population size and then flatten out, for all four taxa. This produces a strongly concave relationship between a population's growth rate and its size. These findings have fundamental implications for our understanding of animals' lives, suggesting in particular that many animals in these taxa will be found living at densities above the carrying capacity of their environments.

DNA sequence evidence supports a superordinal clade of mammals that comprises elephants, sea cows, hyraxes, aardvarks, elephant shrews, golden moles, and tenrecs, which all have their origins in Africa, and therefore are dubbed Afrotheria. Morphologically, this appears an unlikely assemblage, which challenges-by including golden moles and tenrecs-the monophyly of the order Lipotyphla (Insectivora). We here identify in three proteins unique combinations of apomorphous amino acid replacements that support this clade. The statistical support for such "sequence signatures" as unambiguous synapomorphic evidence for the naturalness of the Afrotherian clade is reported. Using likelihood, combinatorial, and Bayesian methods we show that the posterior probability of the mammalian tree containing the Afrotherian clade is effectively 1.0, based on conservative assumptions. Presenting sequence data for another African insectivore, the otter shrew Micropotamogale lamottei, we demonstrate that such signatures are diagnostic for including newly investigated species in the Afrotheria. Sequence signatures provide "protein-morphological" synapomorphies that may aid in visualizing monophyletic groupings.

Theories for the evolution of brain weight in mammals suggest that closely related species have diverged largely as a result of selection for differences in body weight, but that differences among more distantly related species have arisen due to greater net directional selection on brain weight. This pattern of changing selection causes brain weight to evolve more slowly than body weight among closely related species, such as those in the same genus, than among more distantly related species, such as those from different families or orders; a phenomenon known as the "taxon-level effect." Thus, brain weight differs more for a given difference in body weight as the species compared are more distantly related. An alternative explanation for the taxon-level effect is proposed. Distantly related species are more likely to inhabit different ecological conditions than are more closely related species. Where the taxon-level effect occurs, brain weight appears to have evolved in response to the demands of these different ecological conditions. As a consequence, brain weight differs more among distantly related species, for any given difference in body weight, than among closely related species. This effect, rather than a progressive pattern of changing selection pressures, may account for the taxon-level effect in mammals.