Abstract
The literature on chemical weaponry of organisms is vast and provides a rich understanding of the composition and mechanisms of the toxins and other components involved. However, an ecological or evolutionary perspective has often been lacking and is largely limited to (1) molecular evolutionary studies of particular toxins (lacking an ecological view); (2) comparisons across different species that ignore phylogenetic relatedness (lacking an evolutionary view); or (3) descriptive studies of venom composition and toxicology that contain post hoc and untested ecological or evolutionary interpretations (a common event but essentially uninformative speculation). Conveniently, comparative biologists have prolifically been developing and using a wide range of phylogenetic comparative methods that allow us to explicitly address many ecological and evolutionary questions relating to venoms and poisons. Nevertheless, these analytical tools and approaches are rarely used and poorly known by biological toxinologists and toxicologists. In this review I aim to (1) introduce phylogenetic comparative methods to the latter audience; (2) highlight the range of questions that can be addressed using them; and (3) encourage biological toxinologists and toxicologists to either seek out adequate training in comparative biology or seek collaboration with comparative biologists to reap the fruits of a powerful interdisciplinary approach to the field.
Highlights
IntroductionToxinologists have long focused on animal weaponry such as venoms and poisons, and much has been learned about the composition and mechanisms of substances from a wide range of species [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Toxinologists have long focused on animal weaponry such as venoms and poisons, and much has been learned about the composition and mechanisms of substances from a wide range of species [1,2,3,4,5,6].an explicit focus on the evolutionary and ecological aspects of venoms and poisons has been a relatively recent development [7,8] despite the promise of such an approach to explain the compositional and functional patterns evident in the literature
This review offers a brief introduction to the types of comparative approaches available and uses examples from studies on venoms and poisons to show how these different approaches can be applied by toxinologists
Summary
Toxinologists have long focused on animal weaponry such as venoms and poisons, and much has been learned about the composition and mechanisms of substances from a wide range of species [1,2,3,4,5,6]. We would hope that the majority of multispecies papers have used a comparative approach as this is the only reasonable way to draw strong inferences from interspecific data [10] and that this is done with a reasonable sample size (number of species)—these data reflect how well multispecies studies are designed to address comparative questions The results from this survey of papers published in Toxins shows some interesting patterns (Figure 1). 70% of these did not use phylogenies in any way (magnified to 76% when the author’s own publications are excluded) and only 5 papers (14% of multispecies papers) made use of comparative methods to test questions on their interspecific datasets (dropping to only 2 papers, 6%, when mine are excluded) This suggests that the necessity and utility of the comparative approach when analysing data from multiple species to understand the evolution and ecology of venoms is remarkably underused. References for R packages are given only on their first mention, and packages mention under ‘general comparative biology’ are useful for most of the other sections but are not repeated for each for brevity
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