Arrangements of intramembranous muscles of wings are influenced by body mass across the radiation of phyllostomid bats.

Extensive research into bat flight mechanisms has highlighted the complex functional and evolutionary dynamics of their wing structures, yet the anatomical details of certain wing muscles remain elusive. In particular, the intramembranous plagiopatagiales proprii muscles, located within the plagiopatagium-an area of the wing lacking direct joint connections-exhibit remarkable variation across bat families. These muscles, which extend anteroposteriorly in macroscopic bundles, play a crucial role in wing stiffening, modulating membrane tension, and reducing wing curvature during flight.

Weighing in on miniaturization: New body mass estimates for Triassic eucynodonts and analyses of body size evolution during the cynodont-mammal transition.

Body size influences most aspects of an animal's biology, consequently, evolutionary diversification is often accompanied by differentiation of body sizes within a lineage. It is accepted that miniaturization, or the evolution of extremely small body sizes, played a key role in the origin and early evolution of different mammalian characters in non-mammaliaform cynodonts. However, while there are multiple studies on the biomechanical, behavioral, and physiological consequences of smaller sizes, few explore the evolutionary processes that lead to them.

Changes in selection intensity on the mitogenome of subterranean and fossorial rodents respective to aboveground species.

Several rodent lineages independently acquired the ability to dig complex networks of tunnels where fossorial and subterranean species spend part or their whole life, respectively. Their underground lifestyles imposed harsh physiological demands, presumably triggering strong selective pressures on genes involved in energy metabolism like those coding for mitochondrial proteins. Moreover, underground lifestyles must have increased inbreeding and susceptibility to population bottlenecks as well as restricted migration, leading to small effective population size (N) that, in turn, must have reduced the effectiveness of selection.

Disease-associated mitochondrial mutations and the evolution of primate mitogenomes.

Several human diseases have been associated with mutations in mitochondrial genes comprising a set of confirmed and reported mutations according to the MITOMAP database. An analysis of complete mitogenomes across 139 primate species showed that most confirmed disease-associated mutations occurred in aligned codon positions and gene regions under strong purifying selection resulting in a strong evolutionary conservation. Only two confirmed variants (7.