True seals achieved global distribution by breaking Bergmann's rule.

True seals (phocids) have achieved a global distribution by crossing the equator multiple times in their evolutionary history. This is remarkable, as warm tropical waters are regarded as a barrier to marine mammal dispersal and-following Bergmann's rule-may have limited crossings to small-bodied species only. Here, we show that ancestral phocids were medium sized and did not obviously follow Bergmann's rule. Instead, they ranged across a broad spectrum of environmental temperatures, without undergoing shifts in temperature- or size-related evolutionary rates following dispersals across the equator. We conclude that the tropics have not constrained phocid biogeography. © 2022 The Authors. Evolution published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution.

Citation

James P Rule, Felix G Marx, Alistair R Evans, Erich M G Fitzgerald, Justin W Adams. True seals achieved global distribution by breaking Bergmann's rule. Evolution; international journal of organic evolution. 2022 Jun;76(6):1260-1286

Mesh Tags

PMID: 35404473

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