Intercontinental Community Convergence of Ecology and Morphology in Desert Lizards
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Intercontinental Community Convergence of Ecology and Morphology in Desert Lizards
| Title: | Intercontinental Community Convergence of Ecology and Morphology in Desert Lizards |
| Author: |
Harmon, Luke J.; Melville, Jane; Losos, Jonathan
Note: Order does not necessarily reflect citation order of authors. |
| Citation: | Melville, Jane, Luke J. Harmon, and Jonathan B. Losos. 2006. Intercontinental community convergence of ecology and morphology in desert lizards. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 273(1586): 557-563. |
| Access Status: | At the direction of the depositing author this work is not currently accessible through DASH. |
| Full Text & Related Files: |
Losos_IntercontinentalCommunityConvergence.pdf (427.9Kb; PDF) 
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| Abstract: | Evolutionary ecologists have long debated the extent to which communities in similar environments but different geographic regions exhibit convergence. On the one hand, if species' adaptations and community structure are determined by environmental features, convergence would be expected. However, if historical contingencies have long-lasting effects convergence would be unlikely. Most studies to date have emphasized the differences between communities in similar environments and little quantitative evidence for convergence exists. The application of comparative phylogenetic methods to ecological studies provides an opportunity to further investigate hypotheses of convergence. We compared the evolutionary patterns of structural ecology and morphology of 42 species of iguanian lizards from deserts of Australia and North America. Using a comparative approach, we found that evolutionary convergence of ecology and morphology occurs both in overall, community-wide patterns and in terms of pairs of highly similar intercontinental pairs of species. This result indicates that in these desert lizards, deterministic adaptive evolution shapes community patterns and overrides the historical contingencies unique to particular lineages. |
| Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3328 |
| Citable link to this page: | http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:2664297 |
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FAS Scholarly Articles [5133]
Peer reviewed scholarly articles from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences of Harvard University
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