Evolution and ecomorphology of the avian skeleton

Supervisory Team  Dr Roger Benson, Earth Sciences, University of Oxford www.earth.ox.ac.uk/people/roger-benson  Dr Graham Taylor, Zoology, University of Oxford www.zoo.ox.ac.uk/people/view/taylor_gk.htm  Dr Daniel Field, Biology and Biochemistry, University of Bath www.bath.ac.uk/bio-sci/contacts/academics/daniel-field

Key Words Palaeobiology, evolution, birds, flight

swimming and soaring. By quantifying skeletal form across this broad taxonomic sample, the Overview student will test key hypotheses regarding the Birds comprise over 10,000 extant species that evolution of the avian skeleton, form-function diverged from their last common ancestor in the relationships, and their significance for our Late Cretaceous. The extant avian radiation knowledge of early birds and the dinosaur-bird exhibits striking locomotor disparity, including transition. highly varied modes of flight, as well as subaqueous diving, and flightlessness, and some of this variation is evident among the earliest fossil birds. Flight in particular is of central importance to understanding the evolutionary success of birds. Its origin is thought to have resulted an in energetic trade-off between development of the fore- and hind-limbs (Heers & Dial 2015), and exposed bone-related portions of the genome to strong selection (Machado et al. 2016).

Many hypotheses have been proposed to describe how the morphology of the avian skeleton has responded to evolutionary variation in locomotory function (Videler 2005). These hypotheses Skull of the green wood hoopoe Phoeniculus advance our understanding of ecomorphological purpureus rendered from CT scan data adaptation and the mechanics of flight, as well as terrestrial locomotion in birds. Furthermore, they provide a tool with which to infer the locomotory capabilities of extinct species, and can shed light on the evolutionary origin of flight from non-flying Timeline dinosaur ancestors (Xu et al. 2014). However, relationships between skeletal morphology and locomotion across the evolutionary history of living Year 1: Training, 3D methods, bird osteology and birds are poorly constrained, limiting our ability to fossil record. Literature review, data defend these inferences. acquisition/visualisation using high performance computing. Methodology This project will apply quantitative methods, Years 2 and 3: Analysis of data and interpretation, including 3D geometric morphometrics and fossil studies, synthesis. Flexibility as to ways phylogenetic comparative methods, to address this forward and avenues of further enquiry. For knowledge gap. Substantial data for this research example, palaeoecology, bird evolution, are available in the form of a database of CT quantitative observations of flight in living birds scans of the skeletons of more than 400 bird species documenting multiple independent origins Year 4: Data integration, thesis completion, papers of many locomotory styles including flightlessness, for international journals/conference presentation.

Training & Skills Further Information 3D scanning and visualisation, geometric Dr Roger Benson morphometrics, quantitative analysis of evolution [email protected] using phylogenetic comparative methods, bird anatomy, palaeobiology, functional morphology.

References & Further Reading

Videler. 2005. Avian flight. Oxford University Press.

Heers & Dial. 2015. Wings versus legs in the avian bauplan: development and evolution of alternative locomotor strategies. Evolution 69, 305–320.

Machado et al. 2016. Bone-associated gene evolution and the origin of flight in birds. BMC Genomics 17, 371.

Xu et al. 2014. An integrative approach to understanding bird origins. Science 346, 1253293.