RRmorph—a new R package to map phenotypic evolutionary rates and patterns on 3D meshes

Title
RRmorph—a new R package to map phenotypic evolutionary rates and patterns on 3D meshes
Publication Date
2024-08-17
Author(s)
Melchionna, Marina
Castiglione, Silvia
Girardi, Giorgia
Serio, Carmela
Esposito, Antonella
Mondanaro, Alessandro
Profico, Antonio
Sansalone, Gabriele
( author )
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3680-8418
Email: gsansalo@une.edu.au
UNE Id une-id:gsansalo
Raia, Pasquale
Type of document
Journal Article
Language
en
Entity Type
Publication
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Place of publication
United Kingdom
DOI
10.1038/s42003-024-06710-8
UNE publication id
une:1959.11/63891
Abstract

The study of evolutionary rates and patterns is the key to understand how natural selection shaped the current and past diversity of phenotypes. Phylogenetic comparative methods offer an array of solutions to undertake this challenging task, and help understanding phenotypic variation in full in most circumstances. However, complex, three-dimensional structures such as the skull and the brain serve disparate goals, and different portions of these phenotypes often fulfill different functions, making it hard to understand which parts truly were recruited by natural selection. In the recent past, we developed tools apt to chart evolutionary rate and patterns directly on three-dimensional shapes, according to their magnitude and direction. Here, we present further developments of these tools, which now allow to restitute the mapping of rates and patterns with full biological realism. The tools are condensed in a new R software package.

Link
Citation
Communications Biology, v.7, p. 1-9
ISSN
2399-3642
Start page
1
End page
9
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International

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