JUNE 23,
2020
A team of
scientists, led by Natural History Museum postdoctoral researcher Dr.
Anne-Claire Fabre, have conducted the first study on how metamorphosis has
influenced the evolution of salamanders.
Using
micro-CT scanning to study the skulls of this group of animals, the team were
able to build a huge dataset of 148 species of salamanders and
used cutting-edge methods to describe the shape of the skull with nearly 1000 reference
points, known as landmarks.
Dr. Fabre
said, "Most studies of this kind are limited to just a few dozen
landmarks. Our study is the first large-scale investigation of this incredibly
diverse group. We have captured the shape of the skull in such great detail
that it has allowed us to learn more than ever before about how these creatures
evolved."
The
results showed that the ancestor of all salamanders was metamorphic but that
different life
cycles have evolved at least 11 times across the group. Even
more interesting, when different life cycles evolve, salamanders show a burst
of rapid evolution, showing that shifts in life cycle promoted the evolution of
new forms and increased their diversity.
Prof.
Anjali Goswami, a research leader at the Natural History Museum, who is the
senior author of the study, said, "We can see that metamorphosis has
profoundly influenced salamander evolution, allowing for more independent
evolution of the parts of the skull related to feeding and ultimately resulting
in a greater diversity of skull shapes. This means that metamorphosis, and
repeated changes from metamorphosis to other life cycles like live birth or
losing the larval or adult stage entirely, have been key drivers of the
diversity of salamanders over the past 180 million years."
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