Bone histology, phylogeny, and palaeognathous birds (Aves, Palaeognathae)

TY - JOUR

T1 - Bone histology, phylogeny, and palaeognathous birds (Aves, Palaeognathae)

AU - Legendre, Lucas

AU - Bourdon, Estelle

AU - Scofield, Paul

AU - Tennyson, Alan

AU - Lamrous, Hayat

AU - de Ricqles, Armand

AU - Cubo, Jorge

N1 - Special issue: Advances in vertebrate palaeohistology

PY - 2014/8

Y1 - 2014/8

N2 - The presence of a phylogenetic signal in the variation of osteohistological features has been recently debated in the literature. Previous studies have found a significant signal for some features, but these results were obtained on a small amount of characters and a reduced sample. Here we perform a comprehensive study in which we quantify the phylogenetic signal on 62 osteohistological features in an exhaustive sample of palaeognathous birds. We used four different estimators to measure phylogenetic signal – Pagel’s λ, Abouheif’s Cmean, Blomberg’s K, and Diniz-Filho’s phylogenetic eigenvector regressions PVR – and four topologies taken from the literature. Bone size and bone vascular density exhibit a strong phylogenetic signal, whereas all but four of the remaining features measured at the histological level – cellular size in caudal and medial transects of femora, and proportion of oblique vascular canals in rostral and caudal transects of tibiotarsi – exhibit a weaker signal. We also found that the impact of the topologies used in the analyses is very low compared with that of sample size. We conclude that the analysis of a comprehensive sample is crucial to obtain reliable quantifications of the phylogenetic signal.

AB - The presence of a phylogenetic signal in the variation of osteohistological features has been recently debated in the literature. Previous studies have found a significant signal for some features, but these results were obtained on a small amount of characters and a reduced sample. Here we perform a comprehensive study in which we quantify the phylogenetic signal on 62 osteohistological features in an exhaustive sample of palaeognathous birds. We used four different estimators to measure phylogenetic signal – Pagel’s λ, Abouheif’s Cmean, Blomberg’s K, and Diniz-Filho’s phylogenetic eigenvector regressions PVR – and four topologies taken from the literature. Bone size and bone vascular density exhibit a strong phylogenetic signal, whereas all but four of the remaining features measured at the histological level – cellular size in caudal and medial transects of femora, and proportion of oblique vascular canals in rostral and caudal transects of tibiotarsi – exhibit a weaker signal. We also found that the impact of the topologies used in the analyses is very low compared with that of sample size. We conclude that the analysis of a comprehensive sample is crucial to obtain reliable quantifications of the phylogenetic signal.

U2 - 10.1111/bij.12312

DO - 10.1111/bij.12312

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0024-4066

VL - 112

SP - 688

EP - 700

JO - Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London

JF - Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London

IS - 4

ER -