Ancestral ontogenies in shape characters

CATALANO, SANTIAGO ANDRÉS; VERA CANDIOTI, MARÍA FLORENCIA; BALDO, DIEGO; SEGURA VALENTINA

Buenos Aires

Simposio; XXXVI Meeting de la Sociedad Willi Hennig; 2016

Museo Bernardino Rivadavia

We present a novel phylogenetic approach to infer ancestral ontogenies of shape characters described as landmark configurations. The method is rooted in the theoretical developments previously published to analyze landmark data in phylogenetics (Catalano et al. 2010), using the sum of landmarks displacements not only to define ancestral shapes but also to define the optimal interspecific alignments among ontogenetic trajectories. Evolutionary changes along the tree represent modification of pairings between ontogenetic trajectories and changes in landmark positions within stages. The method is implemented in a C language program. Data is read from a tps format file and produces a TNT format fileas output that includes the optimal alignment for each stage ?as a different character block- and a labeled tree showing the inferred heterochronic changes. The approach is illustrated with two empirical examples in anurans and felids.