The Role of (Co)variation in Shaping the Response to Selection in New World Leaf-Nosed Bats.

AbstractUnderstanding and predicting the evolutionary responses of complex morphological traits to selection remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Because traits are genetically correlated, selection on a particular trait produces both direct effects on the distribution of that trait and indirect effects on other traits in the population. The correlations between traits can strongly impact evolutionary responses to selection and may thus impose constraints on adaptation.

Morphological integration during postnatal ontogeny: implications for evolutionary biology.

How covariance patterns of phenotypes change during development is fundamental for a broader understanding of evolution. There is compelling evidence that mammalian cranium covariance patterns change during ontogeny. However, it is unclear to what extent variation in covariance patterns during ontogeny can impact the response to selection.

Cortical bone relationships are maintained regardless of sex and diet in a large population of LGXSM advanced intercross mice.

Introduction: Knowledge of bone structure-function relationships in mice has been based on relatively small sample sets that limit generalizability. We sought to investigate structure-function relationships of long bones from a large population of genetically diverse mice. Therefore, we analyzed previously published data from the femur and radius of male and female mice from the F34 generation of the Large-by-Small advanced intercross line (LGXSM AI), which have over a two-fold continuous spread of bone and body sizes (Silva et al.