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Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2007 Phylogeny and Character Change in the Feloid Carnivora Jill A. (Jill Alexandra) Holliday Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES PHYLOGENY AND CHARACTER CHANGE IN THE FELOID CARNIVORA By JILL A. HOLLIDAY A Dissertation submitted to the Department in Biological Science in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2007 The members of the Committee approve the dissertation of Jill A. Holliday defended on March 21, 2007. ____________________________________ Scott Steppan Professor Directing Dissertation ____________________________________ William Parker Outside Committee Member ____________________________________ Gregory Erickson Committee Member ____________________________________ Joseph Travis Committee Member ____________________________________ David Swofford Committee Member Approved: _____________________________________________ Tim Moerland, Chair, Department of Biological Science _____________________________________________ Dean, College of Arts and Sciences The office of Graduate Studies has verified and approved the above named committee members. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express sincere appreciation to my committee for ongoing discussion and support throughout the course of this project: S. Steppan, G. Erickson, J. Travis, D. Swofford and B. Parker. In addition, I thank J. Albright, J. Burns, M. Reno, K. Rowe and L. VandeVrede for technical discussion and assistance, and I thank J. J. Flynn, L. Werdelin, G. Wesley-Hunt, and A. Goswami for their unselfish encouragement and helpful suggestions regarding this project. I gratefully acknowledge all of those institutions and individuals who provided tissues and samples for study, including the American Museum of Natural History; The Brookfield Zoo; Carnegie Museum of Natural History; Louisiana State Museum; Texas Technical University; L. Heaney, B. Stanley, and S. Goodman, the Field Museum; Candace McCaffery and David Reed, Florida Museum of Natural History; J. Dragoo, Museum of Southwestern Biology; C. Conroy, Museum of Comparative Zoology, UC Berkeley; C. Matthee, Ellerman Museum, South Africa; Jerry Hooker and Daphne Hills, the British Museum of Natural History; The National Museum of Natural History, Paris; Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Boston; The National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; the Page Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum; Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, Berkeley; and the Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm. A variety of funding sources contributed to this study, and support was received from the following: Florida State University Dissertation Research Grant, Florida State University Bennison Memorial Scholarship, Sigma Xi Grants in Aid of Research, The Society of Systematic Biologists, The American Society of Mammalogists, the American Museum of Natural History Collections Study Grant, the American Museum of Natural History Theodore Roosevelt Scholarship, and NSF DDIG # 050-8848 and NSF DEB # 0108450 to Scott Steppan. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables.............................................................................................................................. .....v List of Figures ............................................................................................................................ ....vi Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... .. vii INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................... .....1 1. EVOLUTION OF HYPERCARNIVORY: THE EFFECT OF SPECIALIZATION ON SUBSEQUENT MORPHOLOGICAL AND TAXONOMIC DIVERSIFICATION ............... .....3 Methods......................................................................................................................... .....5 Results ........................................................................................................................... ...12 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... ...13 2. EVOLUTION IN CARNIVORA: IDENTIFYING A MACROEVOLUTIONARY RATCHET.................................................................................................................................. ...27 Methods......................................................................................................................... ...30 Results ........................................................................................................................... ...33 Discussion ..................................................................................................................... ...35 Conclusions ................................................................................................................... ...37 3. PHYLOGENY OF THE FELOID CARNIVORA: BALANCED TAXON SAMPLING AND CONCATENATED NUCLEAR GENES PROVIDES RESOLUTION AT DEEPER NODES....................................................................................................................................... ...47 Materials and Methods ................................................................................................. ...49 Results .......................................................................................................................... ...51 Discussion .................................................................................................................... ...52 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. ...55 4. A COMBINED EVIDENCE PHYLOGENY OF THE FELOID CARNIVORA: COMPREHENSIVE ANALYSIS OF FOSSIL AND MOLECULAR DATA.......................... ...61 Materials and Methods .................................................................................................. ...64 Results .......................................................................................................................... ...73 Discussion .................................................................................................................... ...75 Conclusions .................................................................................................................. ...78 CONCLUSION .......................................................................................................................... ...87 APPENDICES............................................................................................................................ ...88 REFERENCES........................................................................................................................... .125 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH...................................................................................................... .140 iv LIST OF TABLES CHAPTER 1. 1. Taxonomic diversity.................................................................................................. ...17 2. Disparity .................................................................................................................... ...18 3. Frequency of change ................................................................................................. ...19 4. Degree of specialization ........................................................................................... ...20 CHAPTER 2. 5. Generalist forward and reverse changes.................................................................... ...39 6. Frequency of change for RBL without basal............................................................. ...40 7. Frequency of change for RBL with basal.................................................................. ...41 8. Frequency of change for the hypercarnivore complex without basal branches......... ...42 9. Frequency of change for the hypercarnivore complex with basal branches.............. ...43 10. Summary of p values for Relative Blade Length. ................................................... ...44 11. Summary of p values for the hypercarnivore complex............................................ ...45 CHAPTER 3. 12. PCR primer sequences for genes used in this study ................................................ ...56 13. PCR programs. ........................................................................................................ ...57 v LIST OF FIGURES CHAPTER 1. 1. Dentitions indicating increasing specialization ......................................................... ...21 2. Representative cranial and dental measurements ...................................................... ...22 3. Average disparity ...................................................................................................... ...23 4. Average frequency of change.................................................................................... ...24 5. Position of taxa in morphospace based on degree of specialization ......................... ...25 6. Disparity for different degrees of specialization to hypercarnivory ......................... ...26 CHAPTER 2. 7. Method for calculating frequency of change............................................................