The role of clade competition in the diversification of North American canids
Abstract
Extinction is a ubiquitous feature of biodiversity history, and although many lineages increase in diversity through time, most of them eventually decline and get replaced. Dinosaurs and mammals represent an extreme and iconic example of such replacement. Here we investigate the causes of the sequential wax and wane of three subfamilies in the dog family Canidae. Contrary to current expectation, we find that competition from phylogenetically distant, but ecologically similar, clades played a more substantial role in canid diversification than climate change and body size evolution. Our results provide novel quantitative evidence indicating that competition from multiple clades can actively drive the displacement and extinction of entire lineages.
- Publication:
-
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science
- Pub Date:
- July 2015
- DOI:
- 10.1073/pnas.1502803112
- Bibcode:
- 2015PNAS..112.8684S