Influência do ambiente e das relações filogenéticas sobre a variação da coloração em lagomorpha

• Ano de defesa: 2024
• Autor(a) principal: Campos, Amanda Brasil
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Santa Maria; Brasil; Ciências Biológicas; UFSM; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biodiversidade Animal; Centro de Ciências Naturais e Exatas
• Palavras-chave em Português: Coloração animal; Eumelanina; Feomelanina; Lagomorpha; Regra de Gloger; Animal coloration; Eumelanin; Pheomelanin; Gloger’s rule; CNPQ::CIENCIAS BIOLOGICAS
• Link de acesso: http://repositorio.ufsm.br/handle/1/33312

Ecogeographic rules provide theoretical support for how the characteristics of a species can act adaptively. Thus, Gloger's rule provides subsidies to understand how color variation occurs. Rabbits, hares and pikas are lagomorphs that occur mainly in colder regions, such as Eurasia and North America, exhibiting low diversity in warmer and wetter regions. However, despite its importance, the adaptive evolution of lagomorph coloration is still little explored. Therefore, from a comparative phylogenetic approach, we tested whether the coat coloration of lagomorphs is associated with the environment through climatic factors, such as temperature and precipitation, as predicted in the complex version of Gloger's rule. According to the rule, the animals have eumelanin, present in individuals with light and dark coats (gray or black) and pheomelanin, present in animals with reddish coats (brown or red). She states that animals with reddish coats tend to inhabit hot and dry regions, such as deserts, as well as animals with a higher amount of eumelanin are found in warmer and more humid forest regions. Furthermore, we investigated whether there is a phylogenetic signal associated with the coloration of the dorsal coat of the Lagomorpha body. Using the RGB color system, we extracted data on the coloration of 68 lagomorph species. The results indicate that the variation in eumelanic and pheomelanic dorsal coloration has a low phylogenetic signal and it is not significant. Additionally, the study revealed that species with darker colorations are associated to wetter environments, while those with reddish coats are associated with colder and wetter regions, opposed to the prediction of pheomelanin deposition in the coat. Notably, we also observed an interesting fact on the Ochotonidae family, as we found lagomorphs with reddish coats in cold, dry regions, supporting partially the complex version of the rule.