Evolutionary drivers, morphological evolution and diversity dynamics of a surviving mammal clade: cainotherioids at the Eocene--Oligocene transition
Abstract
The Eocene--Oligocene transition (EOT) represents a period of global environmental changes particularly marked in Europe and coincides with a dramatic biotic turnover. Here, using an exceptional fossil preservation, we document and analyse the diversity dynamics of a mammal clade, Cainotherioidea (Artiodactyla), that survived the EOT and radiated rapidly immediately after. We infer their diversification history from Quercy Konzentrat--Lagerst{\"a}tte (south-west France) at the species level using Bayesian birth--death models. We show that cainotherioid diversity fluctuated through time, with extinction events at the EOT and in the late Oligocene, and a major speciation burst in the early Oligocene. The latter is in line with our finding that cainotherioids had a high morphological adaptability following environmental changes throughout the EOT, which probably played a key role in the survival and evolutionary success of this clade in the aftermath. Speciation is positively associated with temperature and continental fragmentation in a time-continuous way, while extinction seems to synchronize with environmental change in a punctuated way. Within-clade interactions negatively affected the cainotherioid diversification, while inter-clade competition might explain their final decline during the late Oligocene. Our results provide a detailed dynamic picture of the evolutionary history of a mammal clade in a context of global change.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2110.05232,
title = {Evolutionary drivers, morphological evolution and diversity dynamics of a surviving mammal clade: cainotherioids at the Eocene--Oligocene transition},
author = {R. Weppe and Maëva Orliac and G. Guinot and Fabien L. Condamine},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2110.05232},
year = {2021}
}