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Divergent Processes Drive Parallel Evolution in Marine and Freshwater Fishes.

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Habitat drives convergent evolution in fish body shape across marine and freshwater systems. Despite different evolutionary processes, fish in similar habitats show parallel morphological diversification, revealing a global pattern.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Ichthyology
  • Comparative Morphology

Background:

  • Environmental divides like marine vs. freshwater systems offer insights into diversification dynamics.
  • Benthic, demersal, and pelagic habitats exist in both marine and freshwater environments, providing comparable ecological opportunities.
  • Understanding evolutionary patterns in these distinct yet analogous systems is crucial for grasping fundamental diversification processes.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To compare evolutionary patterns and processes shaping teleost diversity across marine and freshwater systems.
  • To investigate morphological diversification within benthic, demersal, and pelagic habitats.
  • To contrast the influence of phylogenetic signal versus ecological drivers on fish body shape evolution.

Main Methods:

  • Developed a dataset of linear body measurements for 2266 freshwater and 3344 marine teleost species from the National Museum of Natural History.
  • Employed a novel comparative approach to contrast the primary axis of morphological diversification with the major axis of phylogenetic signal.
  • Analyzed the angles between these axes to quantify similarities and differences in evolutionary trajectories.

Main Results:

  • Fish in corresponding habitats (benthic, demersal, pelagic) exhibit more similar primary axes of morphological diversity than expected by chance.
  • Marine diversification is strongly aligned with phylogenetic signal, with lineages occupying distinct morphospace regions.
  • Freshwater diversification is driven by ecological signals, showing repeated morphological evolution in concentrated morphospace areas.

Conclusions:

  • Habitat has driven convergent patterns of evolutionary diversification on a global scale, despite divergent historical processes in marine and freshwater systems.
  • Phylogenetic signal plays a more dominant role in marine fish diversification, while ecological drivers are key in freshwater systems.
  • This study highlights how similar habitats can lead to parallel evolutionary outcomes through distinct mechanisms.