Podcast 297 - Amanda Falk is Still a Threat

The gang discusses two papers that look at patterns of mosaic evolution, one paper looking at cat evolution and the other paper looking at bird ecomorphy. Which means the gang talks about Amanda’s two favorite taxonomic groups. Meanwhile, Curt enjoys some realistic bird calls, Amanda remains a threat, and James provides relevant “facts”.   Up-Goer Five (Curt Edition): The friends take a look at how animals change over time and how the parts of the animals might change in different ways at different times. The first paper looks at cats and things that are like cats, and they look at the parts of cats and how they have changed. What they find is that the different parts are changing in different ways across different groups of cats and cat like things. The second paper looks at the neck of animals that move in the air. The paper is looking to see if the reason why these necks change the way they do are because of how they are trying to get food, which is what people thought might be true but no one has looked to see if it is true. A lot of work is done and it does seem that the necks change in a lot of ways that are different for different groups, but it does seem that a lot of these changes are because of how the animals try and look for food.   References: Barrett, Paul Z., and Samantha SB Hopkins. "Mosaic evolution underlies feliform morphological disparity." Proceedings of the Royal Society B 291.2028 (2024): 20240756. Marek, Ryan D., and Ryan N. Felice. "The neck as a keystone structure in avian macroevolution and mosaicism." BMC biology 21.1 (2023): 216.