Engineer organisms not only adapt to pre-existing environmental conditions but also co-
construct their physical environment. By doing so, they can subsequently change selection …

Through the Cenozoic, paleoclimate records show general trends of global cooling and
increased aridity, and environments in North America shifted from predominantly forests to …

Members of the order Carnivora display a broad range of locomotor habits, including
cursorial, scansorial, arboreal, semiaquatic, aquatic, and semifossorial species from multiple …

Convergence in morphology can result from evolutionary adaptations in species living in
environments with similar selective pressures. Here, we investigate whether the shape of the …

Ecomorphological diversity of Mesozoic mammals was presumably constrained by selective
pressures imposed by contemporary vertebrates. In accordance, Mesozoic mammals for a …

To understand the functional meaning of morphological features, we need to relate what we
know about morphology and ecology in a meaningful, quantitative framework. Closely …

Strong selective pressure on phenotype can arise when habitat transitions fundamentally
alter the physical media in which animals live, such as the invasion of land by lobe-finned …

Arboreal locomotion allows access to above-ground resources and might have fostered the
diversification of mammals. Nevertheless, simple morphological measurements that …

The link between claw morphology and function has been historically difficult to quantify,
analyze, and interpret. In this study, the functional morphology of vertebrate claws is …

Selective pressures favor morphologies that are adapted to distinct ecologies, resulting in
trait partitioning among ecomorphotypes. However, the effects of these selective pressures …