INVESTIGADORES
FABREZI Marissa
congresos y reuniones científicas
Título:
Quantitative variation of skeletal elements in selected anurans.
Autor/es:
GOLDBERG, JAVIER; FABREZI, MARISSA
Lugar:
Punta del Este
Reunión:
Congreso; 9th International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology.; 2010
Institución organizadora:
Division of Vertebrate Morphology-Society for Integrative & Comparative Biology
Resumen:
Anurans are characterized by a uniform body plan which is tightly conserved across the order since its appearance and later diversification in 47 suprageneric lineages with 5679 living or recently extinct species. We analyzed the quantitative variation of skeletal elements based on 27 measures (defined by 54 landmarks) on the skull, vertebral column, urostyle, pelvic girdle, and limbs long bones from 103 anuran species representing 31 families. Measures were normalized for body length after which a coefficient of variation (CV = standard deviation/means) was generated with higher values representing more variable elements. Analysis of coefficient of variation revealed that: 1) intraordinally, the most distal and preaxial elements of the autopodium exhibited the greatest variation, 2) a similar pattern of variation was observed within different clades and within a single species, and 3) skull length was the least variable measure in the three levels of analysis. It is interesting to note that even when the anuran appendicular skeleton displays an ontogenetic pattern without repatterning like other skeletal components that are affected by metamorphic events, it displays more variation in size. In addition, although in anurans the structural organization of limbs is morphologically constrained, the variation in size of the skeletal elements exhibited a similar pattern with mammals whose limbs possess an extremely diverse configuration.