Geometric morphometrics, the science about the study of shape, has developed much in the last twenty years. In this thesis I first study the reliability of the phylogenies built using geometric morphometrics. The effect of different evolutionary models, branch-length combinations, dimensionality and degrees of integration is explored using computer simulations. Unfortunately in the most common situations (presence of stabilizing selection, short distance between internal nodes and presence of integration) the reliability of the phylogenies is very low. Different empirical studies are analysed to estimate the degree of evolutionary integration usually found in nature. This gives an idea about how powerful the effect of integration is over the reliability of the phylogenies in empirical studies. Evolutionary integration is studied looking at the decrease of variance in the principal components of the tangent shape space using the independent contrasts of shape. The results suggest that empirical data usually show strong degrees of integration in most of the organisms and structures analysed. These are bad news, since strong degree of integration has devastating effects over the phylogenetic reliability, as suggested by our simulations. However, we also propose the existence of other theoretical situations in which strong integration may not translate into convergence between species, like perpendicular orientation of the integration patterns or big total variance relative to the distance between species in the shape space. Finally, geometric morphometrics is applied to the study of the evolution of shape in proteins. There are reasons to think that, because of their modular nature and huge dimensionality, proteins may show different patterns of evolutionary integration. Unfortunately, proteins also show strong functional demands, which influence their evolution and that cause strong integration patterns. Integration is then confirmed as a widespread property in the evolution of shape, which causes poor phylogenetic estimates.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:634868 |
| Date | January 2014 |
| Creators | Varón González, Ceferino |
| Contributors | Klingenberg, Christian |
| Publisher | University of Manchester |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/shape-and-phylogeny(f432d494-9755-41f9-b067-431023ad3248).html |
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