The diffused evolutionary dynamics of morphological novelty

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Quintero, Ignacio
• 署名单位: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS); Institut National de la Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (Inserm); Universite PSL; Ecole Normale Superieure (ENS)
• 刊物名称: PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0027-10689
• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2425573122
• 发表日期: 2024-05-01
• 关键词: within-species variation; body-size evolution; early bursts; adaptive landscape; selection; origin; rates; extinction; speciation; disparity

摘要

Rates of evolution are fundamental to understand the processes that shaped the history of life. The predominant view holds that high rates of phenotypic evolution result from lineage transitions across peaks in an adaptive landscape, with subsequent slowdowns, but evidence remains debated. I developed a phylogenetic diffused Brownian motion model that characterizes nuanced variations in evolutionary rates and use it to comprehensively assess body size evolution and its underlying rates for 2,950 extinct and 792 extant species that span over 450 Mys of evolution. I find that evolutionary rates do not conform to expectations from adaptive landscape theory, but rather have been stable, unaffected by the accumulation of phenotypic disparity. Long-term evolutionary trends, such as several net increases in clade-average body size, result both from sustained evolution at the lineage level and the sorting of species phenotypes and their underlying evolutionary rates at the clade level, sometimes acting in opposite directions. These findings substantiate an active role of species in shaping their environment that generate continuous novelty of life forms.