Diet Evolution and Body Temperature in Tetrapods: Cool Old Carnivores and Hot Young Herbivores

IF 6.3 1区环境科学与生态学 Q1 ECOLOGY Global Ecology and Biogeography Pub Date : 2024-08-18 DOI:10.1111/geb.13900

Kristen E. Saban, John J. Wiens

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Abstract

Aim

Diet is a key aspect of life in animals. There have been numerous independent origins of herbivorous diet across animals, but the factors that explain these origins remain poorly understood. One potentially crucial factor is body temperature (T_b), as the gut-dwelling bacteria that help digest cellulose in many herbivores are thought to require high temperatures. However, analyses in birds, lizards and mammals found only limited evidence for higher T_b in herbivores than in carnivores. These analyses tested whether diet explains T_b evolution. Here, we focus instead on testing whether T_b helps explain the evolution of diet across tetrapods.

Location

Global.

Time Period

Past 350 million years.

Major Taxa Studied

Tetrapods.

Methods

We analysed 1712 species with matched data on diet and T_b using diverse phylogenetic methods.

Results

Ancestral reconstructions indicated that tetrapods likely had a carnivorous ancestor, followed by repeated transitions to omnivory and herbivory, especially in the last 110 million years. Thus, extant herbivorous lineages in tetrapods are relatively young, in contrast to many older carnivorous lineages. They are also relatively unstable in that reversals from herbivory back to omnivory and from omnivory back to carnivory were as frequent as the origins of herbivory and omnivory. Using phylogenetic logistic regression, we support the hypothesis that higher T_b helps explain the evolution of herbivory across tetrapods and within birds, mammals, lepidosaurs and turtles. Phylogenetic path analyses suggest that T_b generally drives the evolution of herbivory, and not vice versa. Our analyses also suggest that T_b is more important for the evolution of herbivory than large body size or diurnal diel activity, which are both significant predictors of herbivory in some cases.

Main Conclusions

Our results show for the first time that T_b is a significant predictor of diet evolution among and within many major animal clades.

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四足动物的饮食进化与体温：冷的老食肉动物和热的年轻食草动物

饮食是动物生活的一个重要方面。不同动物的草食性饮食有许多独立的起源，但人们对解释这些起源的因素仍然知之甚少。一个潜在的关键因素是体温（Tb），因为许多食草动物体内帮助消化纤维素的肠道细菌被认为需要高温。然而，对鸟类、蜥蜴和哺乳动物的分析只发现了有限的证据，证明草食动物的体温比肉食动物高。这些分析测试了饮食是否可以解释总胆红素的进化。在这里，我们将重点放在检验总热量是否有助于解释四足动物的食性进化。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Global Ecology and Biogeography 环境科学-生态学

CiteScore

12.10

自引率

3.10%

发文量

170

审稿时长

3 months

期刊介绍： Global Ecology and Biogeography (GEB) welcomes papers that investigate broad-scale (in space, time and/or taxonomy), general patterns in the organization of ecological systems and assemblages, and the processes that underlie them. In particular, GEB welcomes studies that use macroecological methods, comparative analyses, meta-analyses, reviews, spatial analyses and modelling to arrive at general, conceptual conclusions. Studies in GEB need not be global in spatial extent, but the conclusions and implications of the study must be relevant to ecologists and biogeographers globally, rather than being limited to local areas, or specific taxa. Similarly, GEB is not limited to spatial studies; we are equally interested in the general patterns of nature through time, among taxa (e.g., body sizes, dispersal abilities), through the course of evolution, etc. Further, GEB welcomes papers that investigate general impacts of human activities on ecological systems in accordance with the above criteria.