Integrating ecology into macroevolutionary research

On 9 March, over 150 biologists gathered in London for the Centre for Ecology and Evolution spring symposium, ‘Integrating Ecology into Macroevolutionary Research’. The event brought together researchers from London-based institutions alongside others from across the UK, Europe and North America for a day of talks. The meeting highlighted methodological advances and recent analyses of exemplar datasets focusing on the exploration of the role of ecological processes in shaping macroevolutionary patterns

Morphometric Analysis of Cranial Shape in Fossil and Recent Euprimates

Quantitative analysis of morphology allows for identification of subtle evolutionary patterns or convergences in anatomy that can aid ecological reconstructions of extinct taxa. This study explores diversity and convergence in cranial morphology across living and fossil primates using geometric morphometrics. 33 3D landmarks were gathered from 34 genera of euprimates (382 specimens), including the Eocene adapiforms Adapis and Leptadapis and Quaternary lemurs Archaeolemur, Palaeopropithecus, and Megaladapis. Landmark data was treated with Procrustes superimposition to remove all nonshape differences and then subjected to principal components analysis and linear discriminant function analysis. Haplorhines and strepsirrhines were well separated in morphospace along the major components of variation, largely reflecting differences in relative skull length and width and facial depth. Most adapiforms fell within or close to strepsirrhine space, while Quaternary lemurs deviated from extant strepsirrhines, either exploring new regions of morphospace or converging on haplorhines. Fossil taxa significantly increased the area of morphospace occupied by strepsirrhines. However, recent haplorhines showed significantly greater cranial disparity than strepsirrhines, even with the inclusion of the unusual Quaternary lemurs, demonstrating that differences in primate cranial disparity are likely real and not simply an artefact of recent megafaunal extinctions

Modularity for Mathematica

Morphological integration is correlation of parts, the integration of morphological traits or features that must function, grow, or be passed to offspring on as working units. Individual integrated units are modules, a group of traits that are highly correlated among themselves but only loosely correlated with traits in other modules. The study of integration and modularity was first developed by Olson and Miller (1958) and expanded on by Cheverud (1982), Zelditch (1988), Wagner (1995), Raff (1996), Klingenberg (2000), Mitteroecker (2007) and many others. The basic component of studying modularity and integration is identifying packages of intercorrelated traits that behave independently of other such packages, whether through ontogeny, across individuals within a population, or during the course of evolution. This package performs a simple analysis of modularity on geometric morphometric landmark data. This package accompanies the review by Goswami and Polly (2010). Users are referred to that paper for a discussion of the methods embedded in this package, including their strengths and weaknesses, and for elaboration of other methods that address broader problems

Academic Career Development Stress and Mental Health of Higher Secondary Students- an Indian Perspective

The authors explored the mental health of students with their academic career-related stressors collecting data from 400 students of different schools of Eastern part of India by using; namely GIS, theGeneral Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and theAcademic Career Development Stress Scale. The data was subjected to t tests and ANOVA. Results indicated (i) academic career development stress along with its ten components reveal dissimilarities with respect to gender and streams of study, (ii) significant relationship were indicated between the mental health status of students and various aspects of academic stress and demographic factors, (iii) qualitative analyses highlighted the complex of association among academic stress, mental health and other variables.

Cryptic complexity in felid vertebral evolution: shape differentiation and allometry of the axial skeleton

Members of the mammalian family Felidae (extant and extinct cats) are grossly phenotypically similar, but display a 300-fold range in body size, from less than 1 kg to more than 300 kg. In addition to differences in body mass, felid species show dietary and locomotory specializations that correlate to skull and limb osteological measurements, such as shape or cross-sectional area. However, ecological correlates to the axial skeleton are yet untested. Here, we build on previous studies of the biomechanical and morphological evolution of the felid appendicular skeleton by conducting a quantitative analysis of morphology and allometry in the presacral vertebral column across extant cats. Our results demonstrate that vertebral columns of arboreal, scansorial and terrestrial felids significantly differ in morphology, specifically in the lumbar region, while no distinction based on dietary specialization was found. Body size significantly influences vertebral morphology, with clear regionalization of allometry along the vertebral column, suggesting that anterior (cervicals and thoracics) and posterior (lumbar) vertebrae may be independently subjected to distinct selection pressures

Complex macroevolutionary dynamics underly the evolution of the crocodyliform skull

All modern crocodyliforms (alligators, crocodiles and the gharial) are semi-aquatic generalist carnivores that are relatively similar in cranial form and function. However, this homogeneity represents just a fraction of the variation that once existed in the clade, which includes extinct herbivorous and marine forms with divergent skull structure and function. Here, we use high-dimensional three-dimensional geometric morphometrics to quantify whole-skull morphology across modern and fossil crocodyliforms to untangle the factors that shaped the macroevolutionary history and relatively low phenotypic variation of this clade through time. Evolutionary modelling demonstrates that the pace of crocodyliform cranial evolution is initially high, particularly in the extinct Notosuchia, but slows near the base of Neosuchia, with a late burst of rapid evolution in crown-group crocodiles. Surprisingly, modern crocodiles, especially Australian, southeast Asian, Indo-Pacific species, have high rates of evolution, despite exhibiting low variation. Thus, extant lineages are not in evolutionary stasis but rather have rapidly fluctuated within a limited region of morphospace, resulting in significant convergence. The structures related to jaw closing and bite force production (e.g. pterygoid flange and quadrate) are highly variable, reinforcing the importance of function in driving phenotypic variation. Together, these findings illustrate that the apparent conservativeness of crocodyliform skulls betrays unappreciated complexity in their macroevolutionary dynamics.Fil: Felice, Ryan N.. Colegio Universitario de Londres; Reino Unido. Natural History Museum; Reino UnidoFil: Pol, Diego. Museo Paleontológico Egidio Feruglio; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Centro Nacional Patagónico; ArgentinaFil: Goswami, Anjali. Natural History Museum; Reino Unid

Resolving the relationships of Paleocene placental mammals

The ‘Age of Mammals’ began in the Paleocene epoch, the 10 million year interval immediately following the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction. The apparently rapid shift in mammalian ecomorphs from small, largely insectivorous forms to many small‐to‐large‐bodied, diverse taxa has driven a hypothesis that the end‐Cretaceous heralded an adaptive radiation in placental mammal evolution. However, the affinities of most Paleocene mammals have remained unresolved, despite significant advances in understanding the relationships of the extant orders, hindering efforts to reconstruct robustly the origin and early evolution of placental mammals. Here we present the largest cladistic analysis of Paleocene placentals to date, from a data matrix including 177 taxa (130 of which are Palaeogene) and 680 morphological characters. We improve the resolution of the relationships of several enigmatic Paleocene clades, including families of ‘condylarths’. Protungulatum is resolved as a stem eutherian, meaning that no crown‐placental mammal unambiguously pre‐dates the Cretaceous–Palaeogene boundary. Our results support an Atlantogenata–Boreoeutheria split at the root of crown Placentalia, the presence of phenacodontids as closest relatives of Perissodactyla, the validity of Euungulata, and the placement of Arctocyonidae close to Carnivora. Periptychidae and Pantodonta are resolved as sister taxa, Leptictida and Cimolestidae are found to be stem eutherians, and Hyopsodontidae is highly polyphyletic. The inclusion of Paleocene taxa in a placental phylogeny alters interpretations of relationships and key events in mammalian evolutionary history. Paleocene mammals are an essential source of data for understanding fully the biotic dynamics associated with the end‐Cretaceous mass extinction. The relationships presented here mark a critical first step towards accurate reconstruction of this important interval in the evolution of the modern fauna

Analysis and Prediction of Alerts in Perimeter Intrusion Detection System

Perimeter surveillance systems play an important role in the safety and security of the armed forces. These systems tend to generate alerts in advent of anomalous situations, which require human intervention. The challenge is the generation of false alerts or alert flooding which makes these systems inefficient. In this paper, we focus on short-term as well as long-term prediction of alerts in the perimeter intrusion detection system. We have explored the dependent and independent aspects of the alert data generated over a period of time. Short-term prediction is realized by exploiting the independent aspect of data by narrowing it down to a time-series problem. Time-series analysis is performed by extracting the statistical information from the historical alert data. A dual-stage approach is employed for analyzing the time-series data and support vector regression is used as the regression technique. It is helpful to predict the number of alerts for the nth hour. Additionally, to understand the dependent aspect, we have investigated that the deployment environment has an impact on the alerts generated. Long-term predictions are made by extracting the features based on the deployment environment and training the dataset using different regression models. Also, we have compared the predicted and expected alerts to recognize anomalous behaviour. This will help in realizing the situations of alert flooding over the potential threat