Trends in the Evolution and Ecology of Functional Morphology in Neotropical Cichlids
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The uneven distribution of biological diversity has been a subject of great interest in the study of evolutionary biology. Advances in molecular phylogenetics and comparative methods have facilitated an increasing number of studies relating to the impacts of neutral and adaptive processes on morphological diversity, especially those relating to the predictions of adaptive radiation. While such studies have largely focused on restricted, island radiations, such as African Rift Lake cichlids and Caribbean anoles, recent years have seen an expansion of the analysis of morphological evolution within more broadly-distributed clades. Due to their species-richness, ecological/morphological diversity and age, the continentally-distributed freshwater fish Cichlinae (Neotropical cichlids) represent an ideal system for the study of morphological evolution and its relationship to ecological diversity. Combining data from biomechanics, morphometrics, modern and fossil specimens, and dietary analyses with a comprehensive molecular phylogeny and modern phylogenetic comparative methods I examined functional morphological evolution in Neotropical cichlids and the impact of factors such as selection, adaptation, extinction and ecological opportunity on diversification. Analysis of the functional morphospace of Neotropical cichlids revealed complex selective regimes that have contributed to their modern functional diversity. Rates of functional evolution varied with ecological opportunity in Neotropical cichlids, declining in South American through time and increasing upon the colonization of new habitats in Central America. Extinct, fossil cichlid species demonstrate the stability of selective processes on ecomorphological evolution over tens of millions of years. Functional morphology was also significantly correlated with dietary composition. While feeding roles constrained trait evolution along particular morphological axes, dietary specialization increased evolutionary rates, facilitating the evolution of more extreme morphologies. Neotropical cichlid morphological diversity has been influenced by selection and adaptive diversification especially in relation to trade-offs in bentho-pelagic foraging, and patterns of evolution in South America are consistent with a continental adaptive radiation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".