Phylogeny, ecology and deep time: 2D outline analysis of anuran skulls from the Early Cretaceous to the Recent

Abstract

Anurans have a long fossil record, spanning from the Early Jurassic to the Recent. However, specimens are often severely flattened, limiting their inclusion in quantitative analyses of morphological evolution. We perform a two-dimensional morphometric analysis of anuran skull outlines, incorporating 42 Early Cretaceous to Miocene species, as well as 93 extant species in 32 families. Outlines were traced in tpsDig2 and analysed with elliptical Fourier analysis. Fourier coefficients were used in MANOVAs, phylogenetic MANOVAs (as significant phylogenetic signal was found) and disparity analyses across multiple ecological and life history groupings. The Neotropical realm showed higher disparity than the Australian, Palaearctic and Oriental realms (p = 0.007, 0.013, 0.038, respectively) suggesting concordance of disparity and diversity. Developmental strategy had a weak effect on skull shape (R2 = 0.02, p = 0.039) and disparity was similar in metamorphosing and direct developing frogs. Ecological niche was a significant discriminator of skull shape (F = 1.43, p = 0.004) but not after phylogenetic correction. Evolutionary allometry had a small but significant influence on the cranial outlines of the combined extant and fossil dataset (R2 = 0.05, p = 0.004). Finally, morphospace occupation appears to have changed over time (F = 1.59, p = 5 × 10−10). However, as with ecological signal, this shift appears to be largely driven by phylogeny and was not significant after phylogenetic correction (R2 = 0.26, p = 0.22). This study thus suggests that frog skull evolution is shaped more by phylogenetic constraints than by ecology.