Publication Date:
2004-10-02
Description:
Over the past 50 million years, successive clades of large carnivorous mammals diversified and then declined to extinction. In most instances, the cause of the decline remains a puzzle. Here we argue that energetic constraints and pervasive selection for larger size (Cope's rule) in carnivores lead to dietary specialization (hypercarnivory) and increased vulnerability to extinction. In two major clades of extinct North American canids, the evolution of large size was associated with a dietary shift to hypercarnivory and a decline in species durations. Thus, selection for attributes that promoted individual success resulted in progressive evolutionary failure of their clades.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Van Valkenburgh, Blaire -- Wang, Xiaoming -- Damuth, John -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2004 Oct 1;306(5693):101-4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1606, USA. bvanval@ucla.edu〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15459388" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Body Constitution
;
Body Weight
;
*Carnivora/anatomy & histology/classification/physiology
;
Cuspid/anatomy & histology
;
*Diet
;
*Fossils
;
Incisor/anatomy & histology
;
Jaw/anatomy & histology
;
Molar/anatomy & histology
;
North America
;
Paleodontology
;
Population Density
;
Population Dynamics
;
Predatory Behavior
;
Principal Component Analysis
;
Selection, Genetic
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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