Quantitative developmental data in a phylogenetic framework

Following the embryonic period of organogenesis, most development is allometric growth, which is thought to produce most of the evolutionary morphological divergence between related species. Bivariate or multivariate coefficients of allometry are used to describe quantitative developmental data and are comparable across taxa; as such, these coefficients are amenable to direct treatment in a phylogenetic framework. Mapping of actual allometric coefficients onto phylogenetic trees is supported on the basis of the evolving nature of growth programs and the type of character (continuous) that they represent. This procedure depicts evolutionary allometry accurately and allows for the generation of reliable reconstructions of ancestral allometry, as shown here with a previously published case study on rodent cranial ontogeny. Results reconstructed the signature allometric patterns of rodents to the root of the phylogeny, which could be traced back into a (minimum) Paleocene age. Both character and statistical dependence need to be addressed, so this approach can be integrated with phylogenetic comparative methods that deal with those issues. It is shown that, in this particular sample of rodents, common ancestry explains little allometric variation given the level of divergence present within, and convergence between, major rodent lineages. Furthermore, all that variation is independent of body mass. Thus, from an evolutionary perspective, allometry appears to have a strong functional and likely adaptive basis. J. Exp. Zool. (Mol. Dev. Evol.) 322B: 558–566, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.