Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics
Vertebrates have evolved to gigantic sizes repeatedly over the past 250 Myr, reaching their extreme in today's baleen whales (Mysticeti). Hypotheses for the evolution of exceptionally large size in mysticetes range from niche partitioning to predator avoidance, but there has been no quantitativ...
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ftpubmed:oai:pubmedcentral.nih.gov:5454272 2023-05-15T15:36:55+02:00 Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics Slater, Graham J. Goldbogen, Jeremy A. Pyenson, Nicholas D. 2017-05-31 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454272/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28539520 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 en eng The Royal Society http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454272/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28539520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 © 2017 The Author(s). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. CC-BY Palaeobiology Text 2017 ftpubmed https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 2017-06-11T00:09:27Z Vertebrates have evolved to gigantic sizes repeatedly over the past 250 Myr, reaching their extreme in today's baleen whales (Mysticeti). Hypotheses for the evolution of exceptionally large size in mysticetes range from niche partitioning to predator avoidance, but there has been no quantitative examination of body size evolutionary dynamics in this clade and it remains unclear when, why or how gigantism evolved. By fitting phylogenetic macroevolutionary models to a dataset consisting of living and extinct species, we show that mysticetes underwent a clade-wide shift in their mode of body size evolution during the Plio-Pleistocene. This transition, from Brownian motion-like dynamics to a trended random walk towards larger size, is temporally linked to the onset of seasonally intensified upwelling along coastal ecosystems. High prey densities resulting from wind-driven upwelling, rather than abundant resources alone, are the primary determinant of efficient foraging in extant mysticetes and Late Pliocene changes in ocean dynamics may have provided an ecological pathway to gigantism in multiple independent lineages. Text baleen whale baleen whales PubMed Central (PMC) Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 284 1855 20170546 |
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Palaeobiology |
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Palaeobiology Slater, Graham J. Goldbogen, Jeremy A. Pyenson, Nicholas D. Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
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Palaeobiology |
description |
Vertebrates have evolved to gigantic sizes repeatedly over the past 250 Myr, reaching their extreme in today's baleen whales (Mysticeti). Hypotheses for the evolution of exceptionally large size in mysticetes range from niche partitioning to predator avoidance, but there has been no quantitative examination of body size evolutionary dynamics in this clade and it remains unclear when, why or how gigantism evolved. By fitting phylogenetic macroevolutionary models to a dataset consisting of living and extinct species, we show that mysticetes underwent a clade-wide shift in their mode of body size evolution during the Plio-Pleistocene. This transition, from Brownian motion-like dynamics to a trended random walk towards larger size, is temporally linked to the onset of seasonally intensified upwelling along coastal ecosystems. High prey densities resulting from wind-driven upwelling, rather than abundant resources alone, are the primary determinant of efficient foraging in extant mysticetes and Late Pliocene changes in ocean dynamics may have provided an ecological pathway to gigantism in multiple independent lineages. |
format |
Text |
author |
Slater, Graham J. Goldbogen, Jeremy A. Pyenson, Nicholas D. |
author_facet |
Slater, Graham J. Goldbogen, Jeremy A. Pyenson, Nicholas D. |
author_sort |
Slater, Graham J. |
title |
Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
title_short |
Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
title_full |
Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
title_fullStr |
Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
title_full_unstemmed |
Independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to Plio-Pleistocene ocean dynamics |
title_sort |
independent evolution of baleen whale gigantism linked to plio-pleistocene ocean dynamics |
publisher |
The Royal Society |
publishDate |
2017 |
url |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454272/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28539520 https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 |
genre |
baleen whale baleen whales |
genre_facet |
baleen whale baleen whales |
op_relation |
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5454272/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28539520 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 |
op_rights |
© 2017 The Author(s). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
op_rightsnorm |
CC-BY |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2017.0546 |
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Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences |
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284 |
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1855 |
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20170546 |
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