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Geometric differences between the crania of Australian hopping mice (
- Source :
- Australian Mammalogy. 44:24-38
- Publication Year :
- 2021
- Publisher :
- CSIRO Publishing, 2021.
-
Abstract
- Half of the ten Australian hopping mice (Notomys) species have become extinct following the European colonisation of Australia, and most of the rest are threatened. This makes the study of their present diversity paramount. Although recent molecular phylogenies improved our understanding of the relationships among the species, detailed interspecific phenotypic comparisons are still lacking. This is the aim of the present study. Geometric morphometric methods were used to compare the crania of all five extant species (N. alexis, N. aquillo, N. cervinus, N. fuscus, and N. mitchellii) along with the extinct N. longicaudatus. Although previous work (based on traditional approaches) find intragenerically conserved crania, the present study discovers significant differences in cranial size and shape among Notomys species, with the ventral view being more distinct than the dorsal view. There was no evidence of sexual dimorphism in cranial size nor shape, and only a weak allometric effect. Most aspects of cranial shape differed among the species. The extant species pair that differed in cranial shape the most was N. aquilo – N. cervinus, differing in the foramen magnum, tympanic bulla, orbit, incisive foramen, and rostrum, along with cranial width, potentially a consequence of N. cervinus’ phylogenetic position, and N. aquilo’s s ecological uniqueness.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
Crania
biology
Rostrum
Murinae
biology.organism_classification
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
010601 ecology
Sexual dimorphism
Colonisation
medicine.anatomical_structure
Evolutionary biology
Threatened species
medicine
Animal Science and Zoology
Allometry
Incisive foramen
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 18367402 and 03100049
- Volume :
- 44
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Australian Mammalogy
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........c63a9bca2119f961bd8b7a73ffce27b7