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. 2015 Apr 15;10(4):e0122412.
doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0122412. eCollection 2015.

Niche suitability affects development: skull asymmetry increases in less suitable areas

Renan Maestri  1 , Rodrigo Fornel  2 , Daniel Galiano  3 , Thales R O de Freitas  4
Affiliations

Niche suitability affects development: skull asymmetry increases in less suitable areas

Renan Maestri et al. PLoS One. .

Abstract

For conservation purposes, it is important to take into account the suitability of a species to particular habitats; this information may predict the long-term survival of a species. In this sense, morphological measures of developmental stress, such as fluctuating asymmetry, can be proxies for an individual's performance in different regions. In this study, we conducted tests to determine whether areas with different levels of suitability for a species (generated by ecological niche models) were congruent with morphological markers that reflect environmental stress and morphological variance. We generated a Maxent niche model and compared the suitability assessments of several areas with the skull morphology data (fluctuating asymmetry and morphological disparity) of populations of the Atlantic forest endemic to Brazil rodent Akodon cursor. Our analyses showed a significant negative relationship between suitability levels and fluctuating asymmetry levels, which indicates that in less suitable areas, the individuals experience numerous disturbances during skull ontogeny. We have not found an association between morphological variance and environmental suitability. As expected, these results suggest that in environments with a lower suitability, developmental stress is increased. Such information is helpful in the understanding of the species evolution and in the selection of priority areas for the conservation of species.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1
Fig 1. Geographic distribution of sampling localities of Akodon cursor.
A) 84 presence data entries used in the species distribution modeling. B) 22 localities used for the fluctuating asymmetry and morphological variance analysis. Light gray represents the boundaries of the Atlantic forest biome. South America map obtained from OpenStreetMap (free available at: http://www.openstreetmap.org/), and Atlantic forest biome shape obtained from MMA (free available at: http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/datadownload.htm). The image was edited using CorelDraw graphics Suite.
Fig 2
Fig 2. Landmarks digitized in the ventral skull of all Akodon cursor specimens.
A description of each landmark is presented in S3 Appendix.
Fig 3
Fig 3. Suitable areas for Akodon cursor according to Maxent (maximum entropy) model in Brazilian Atlantic Forest.
The white circles indicate levels of fluctuating asymmetry in skulls across geographical space. Atlantic forest biome shape obtained from MMA (free available at: http://mapas.mma.gov.br/i3geo/datadownload.htm), and generated on Quantum Gis (QGIS, free available at: http://qgis.org/).
Fig 4
Fig 4. The relationship between fluctuating asymmetry, morphological variability, and environmental suitability.
The scatter plots are showing the relationship between fluctuating asymmetry and environmental suitability in two spatial scales (top) and the relationship between morphological variance and environmental suitability (down). The dashed bars represent the standard error. The value of the coefficient of determination is shown.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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