Femoral morphology of sciuromorph rodents in light of scaling and locomotor ecology

Abstract Sciuromorph rodents are a monophyletic group comprising about 300 species with a body mass range spanning three orders of magnitude and various locomotor behaviors that we categorized into arboreal, fossorial and aerial. The purpose of this study was to investigate how the interplay of locomotor ecology and body mass affects the morphology of the sciuromorph locomotor apparatus. The most proximal skeletal element of the hind limb, i.e. the femur, was selected, because it was shown to reflect a functional signal in various mammalian taxa. We analyzed univariate traits (effective femoral length, various robustness variables and the in-levers of the muscles attaching to the greater, third and lesser trochanters) as well as femoral shape, representing a multivariate trait. An ordinary least-squares regression including 177 species was used to test for a significant interaction effect between body mass and locomotor ecology on the variables. Specifically, it tested whether the scaling patterns of the fossorial and aerial groups differ when compared with the arboreal, because the latter was identified as the ancestral sciuromorph condition via stochastic character mapping. We expected aerial species to display the highest trait values for a given body mass as well as the steepest slopes, followed by the arboreal and fossorial species along this order. An Ornstein?Uhlenbeck regression fitted to a phylogenetically pruned dataset of 140 species revealed the phylogenetic inertia to be very low in the univariate traits, hence justifying the utilization of standard regressions. These variables generally scaled close to isometry, suggesting that scaling adjustments might not have played a major role for most of the femoral features. Nevertheless, the low phylogenetic inertia indicates that the observed scaling patterns needed to be maintained during sciuromorph evolution. Significant interaction effects were discovered in the femoral length, the centroid size of the condyles, and the in-levers of the greater and third trochanters. Additionally, adjustments in various femoral traits reflect the acquisitions of fossorial and aerial behaviors from arboreal ancestors. Using sciuromorphs as a focal clade, our findings exemplify the importance of statistically accounting for potential interaction effects of different environmental factors in studies relating morphology to ecology

Kinematics and brightness temperatures of transition discs

Context. In recent years, high-angular-resolution observations of the dust and gas content in circumstellar discs have revealed a variety of morphologies, naturally triggering the question of whether these substructures are driven by forming planets interacting with their environment or other mechanisms. While it remains difficult to directly image embedded planets, one of the most promising methods to distinguish disc-shaping mechanisms is to study the kinematics of the gas disc. Characterising deviations from Keplerian rotation can then be used to probe underlying perturbations such as planet-disc interactions. Creating spiral structures, the latter can also be traced in the brightness temperature. Aims. In this paper, we aim to analyse the gas brightness temperatures and kinematics of a sample of 36 transition discs observed with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to resolve and characterise possible substructures that may be tracing embedded companions. Methods. For our analysis, we use archival Band 6 and Band 7 ALMA observations of different CO isotopologues (12CO, 13CO, and C18O) and fit different Keplerian disc models (thin and thick disc geometry) to the retrieved velocity field of each disc. Results. After the subtraction of an azimuthally averaged brightness temperature profile and Keplerian rotation model from the peak brightness temperature and velocity maps, we find significant substructures in eight sources of our sample (CQ Tau, GG Tau, HD 100453, HD 142527, HD 169142, HP Cha, TW Hya, and UX Tau A) in both the brightness temperature and velocity residuals. Other sources show tentative features, while about half of our sample does not show any substructures in the temperature and kinematics that may be indicative of planet-disc interactions. Conclusions. For the first time, we compare the substructures from our analysis with various other indicators for the presence of planets. About 20% of discs show strong features such as arcs or spirals, possibly associated with the presence of planets, while the majority of discs do not present as clear planet-driven signatures. Almost all discs that exhibit spirals in near-infrared scattered light show at least tentative features in the CO data. The present data are able to reveal only very massive bodies and a lack of features may suggest that, if there are planets at all, they are of lower mass (<1–3 MJ) or may be located closer to the star within deep cavities. Deeper and higher resolution observations and modelling efforts are needed to confirm such scenarios