Student Publications
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Reed bamboo is a major ecological and economic resource for many animals, including humans. Nonetheless, the influence of this plant's evolutionary role on the morphology of animal species remains unexplored. Here, we investigated the significance of bamboo habitats as ecological opportunities in shaping the skull morphology of bush frogs (Raorchestes) from the Western Ghats, Peninsular India. We applied a three-dimensional (3D) geometric morphometric approach to capture the skull shape of 55 species of bush frogs. We visualized the skull shape variables in phylomorphospace with principal component analysis and performed phylogenetic generalized least-squares analysis to assess the impact of cranial size (evolutionary allometry) and habitat (bamboo or non-bamboo) on cranial shape. We quantified the morphological disparity between bamboo and non-bamboo bush frogs' skull shape, and employed RRphylo, a phylogenetic ridge regression method, to access the evolutionary rate and rate shifts of skull shape change. The phylomorphospace delineated bamboo and non-bamboo bush frogs. While cranial shape exhibited a significant but smaller association with size, its association with habitat type was non-significant. We detected, however, significant differences in skull shape between the two frog groups, with bamboo frogs showing higher morphological disparity and a remarkable shift in the evolutionary rate of skull shape diversification. These findings underscore the role of reed bamboo in the evolution of skull shape in the radiation of frogs, endemic to the Western Ghats. We demonstrate that the association between the members of two distinct endemic clades (bamboo reeds and bamboo frogs) is the outcome of a deep-time ecological opportunity that dates back to the Miocene.
Publication Title
Ecology and Evolution
Publication Date
9-2023
Volume
13
Issue
9
ISSN
2045-7758
DOI
10.1002/ece3.10493
Keywords
3D geometric morphometry, adaptive radiation, amphibia, anura, bush frogs, ecological opportunity, morphology
Repository Citation
Das, Kalpana; Rödel, Mark-Oliver; Stanley, Edward; Srikanthan, Achyuthan N.; Shanker, Kartik; and Vijayakumar, Seenapuram Palaniswamy, "Reed bamboos drive skull shape evolution in bush frogs of the Western Ghats, Peninsular India" (2023). Student Publications. 25.
https://commons.clarku.edu/student_publications/25
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Conditions
Publisher source must be acknowledged with citation: Das, K., Rödel, M. O., Stanley, E., Srikanthan, A. N., Shanker, K., & Vijayakumar, S. P. (2023). Reed bamboos drive skull shape evolution in bush frogs of the Western Ghats, Peninsular India. Ecology and Evolution, 13(9), e10493. Must link to publisher version with DOI: 10.1002/ece3.10493