Meeting Abstract
Size and shape are often considered important variables that lead to variation in performance. In studies of feeding, size-corrected metrics of the skull are often used as proxies of biting performance; however, few studies have examined the relationship between cranial shape in it’s entirety and estimated bite force across species and how dietary ecologies may affect these variables differently. Here, we used geometric morphometric and phylogenetic comparative approaches to examine relationships between cranial morphology and estimated bite force in the carnivoran clade Musteloidea. We found a strong relationship between cranial size and estimated bite force but did not find a significant relationship between cranial shape and size-corrected estimated bite force. Many-to-one mapping of form to function may explain this pattern because a variety of evolutionary shape changes rather than a single shape change may have contributed to an increase in relative biting ability. We also found that dietary ecologies influenced cranial shape evolution but did not influence cranial size nor size-corrected bite force evolution. While musteloids with different diets exhibit variation in cranial shapes, they have similar estimated bite forces suggesting that other feeding performance metrics and potentially non-feeding traits are also important contributors to cranial evolution. We postulate that axial and appendicular adaptations and the interesting feeding behaviors reported for species within this group also facilitate different dietary ecologies between species. Future work integrating cranial, axial, and appendicular form and function with behavioral observations will reveal further insights in the evolution of dietary ecologies and other ecological variables.
