Behaviour of cranes (family Gruidae) mirrors their phylogenetic relationships

Nela Nováková,Jan Robovský

doi:10.1186/s40657-021-00275-4

Nela Nováková, Jan Robovský

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-021-00275-4

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Abstract

BackgroundThe behavioural repertoire of every species evolved over time and its evolution can be traced through the phylogenetic relationships in distinct groups. Cranes (family Gruidae) represent a small, old, monophyletic group with well-corroborated phylogenetic relationships on the species level, and at the same time they exhibit a complex and well-described behavioural repertoire.MethodsWe therefore investigated the evolution of behavioural traits of cranes in a phylogenetic context using several phylogenetic approaches and two types of trait scoring. The cranes exhibit more than a hundred behavioural displays, almost one third of which may be phylogenetically informative.ResultsMore than half of the analysed traits carry a significant phylogenetic signal. The ancestor of cranes already exhibited a quite complex behavioural repertoire, which remained unchanged in Balearicinae but altered greatly in Gruinae, specifically by the shedding of traits rather than their creation. Trait scoring has an influence on results within the Gruinae, primarily in genera Bugeranus and Anthropoides.ConclusionsAlbeit the behavioural traits alone cannot be used for resolving species-level relationships within the Gruidae, when optimized on molecular tree, they can help us to detect interesting evolutionary transformations of behaviour repertoire within Gruiformes. The Limpkin (Aramus guarauna) seems to be the most enigmatic species and should be studied in detail for its behavioural repertoire, which may include some precursors of crane behavioural traits.

Highlights

The behavioural repertoire of every species evolved over time and its evolution can be traced through the phylogenetic relationships in distinct groups
It is already documented that behaviour often carries significant phylogenetic signal
Behavioural data allow us to reconstruct the ancestral behavioural repertoire for particular groups (Cap et al 2002; Lister 2014), which is an important task if we are to understand how behaviour has evolved over time with regard to the homoplasy and adaptive potential of behaviour for the particular groups (Lefebvre et al 2016; Downs et al 2019; Penndorf and Aplin 2020)

Summary

Introduction

The behavioural repertoire of every species evolved over time and its evolution can be traced through the phylogenetic relationships in distinct groups. Cranes (family Gruidae) represent a small, old, monophyletic group with well-corroborated phylogenetic relationships on the species level, and at the same time they exhibit a complex and well-described behavioural repertoire. Behavioural traits have been traditional sources of phylogenetic information along with morphological data (de Queiroz and Wimberger 1993; Kusmierski et al 1997; Gatesy et al 1999), even though a behavioural repertoire was often believed to be highly adaptive. Same results occurred in the case of toucans and barbets, it was proven that the body size can predict their mating behaviour and vice versa, and that mating behaviour can catalyse diversification (Miles and Fuxjager 2019)

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