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Influence of phylogeny on the estimation of diet from dental morphology in the Carnivora

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2021

Samantha S. B. Hopkins Open the ORCID record for Samantha S. B. Hopkins [Opens in a new window] ,
Samantha A. Price  and
Alec J. Chiono
Samantha S. B. Hopkins*
Affiliation:
Department of Earth Sciences, Clark Honors College, and Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of Oregon, 1272 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon 97403, U.S.A. E-mail: shopkins@uoregon.edu
Samantha A. Price
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, 132 Long Hall, Clemson, South Carolina 29634, U.S.A. E-mail: sprice6@clemson.edu
Alec J. Chiono
Affiliation:
Department of Biology, University of San Francisco, 2130 Fulton Street, San Francisco, California 94117, U.S.A. E-mail: ajchiono2@dons.usfca.edu
*
*Corresponding author.
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Abstract

Because teeth are the most easily preserved part of the vertebrate skeleton and are particularly morphologically variable in mammals, studies of fossil mammals rely heavily on dental morphology. Dental morphology is used both for systematics and phylogeny as well as for inferences about paleoecology, diet in particular. We analyze the influence of evolutionary history on our ability to reconstruct diet from dental morphology in the mammalian order Carnivora, and we find that much of our understanding of diet in carnivorans is dependent on the phylogenetic constraints on diet in this clade. Substantial error in estimating diet from dental morphology is present regardless of the morphological data used to make the inference, although more extensive morphological datasets are more accurate in predicting diet than more limited character sets. Unfortunately, including phylogeny in making dietary inferences actually decreases the accuracy of these predictions, showing that dietary predictions from morphology are substantially dependent on the evolutionary constraints on carnivore diet and tooth shape. The “evolutionary ratchet” that drives lineages of carnivorans to evolve greater degrees of hypercarnivory through time actually plays a role in allowing dietary inference from tooth shape, but consequently requires caution in interpreting dietary inference from the teeth fossil carnivores. These difficulties are another reminder of the differences in evolutionary tempo and mode between morphology and ecology.

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Paleobiology , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , May 2022 , pp. 324 - 339
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Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Paleontological Society

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References

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