Juvenile ecology drives adult morphology in two insect orders
Open accessAbstract
Most animals undergo ecological niche shifts between distinct life phases, but such shifts can result in adaptive conflicts of phenotypic traits. Metamorphosis can reduce these conflicts by breaking up trait correlations, allowing each life phase to independently adapt to its ecological niche. This process is called adaptive decoupling. It is, however, yet unknown to what extent adaptive decoupling is realized on a macroevolutionary scale in hemimetabolous insects and if the degree of adaptive decoupling is correlated with the strength of ontogenetic niche shifts. It is also unclear whether the degree of adaptive decoupling is correlated with phenotypic disparity. Here, we quantify nymphal and adult trait correlations in 219 species across the whole phylogeny of earwigs and stoneflies to test whether juvenile and adult traits are decoupled from each other. We demonstrate that adult head morphology is largely driven by nymphal ecology, and that adult head shape disparity has increased with stronger ontogenetic niche shifts in some stonefly lineages. Our findings implicate that the hemimetabolan metamorphosis in earwigs and stoneflies does not allow for high degrees of adaptive decoupling, and that high phenotypic disparity can even be realized when the evolution of distinct life phases is coupled.
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High-throughput phenomics of global ant biodiversity
Katzke, J., Hita Garcia, F., Lösel, P. D., Azuma, F., Faragó, T., Aibekova, L., Casadei-Ferreira, A., Gautam, S., Richter, A., Toulkeridou, E., et al. (2026) · Nature Methods · doi:10.1038/s41592-026-03005-0 · Cited by 6 · see citing works
“Automated synchrotron micro-CT has already been successful to digitize invertebrates for comparative research 24,25 and is suitable to be extended to cover entire groups of diverse small organisms.”
Self-citation
- Authors
- Rühr, P. T., van de Kamp, T., Faragó, T., Hammel, J. U., Wilde, F., Borisova, E., Edel, C., Frenzel, M., Baumbach, T., & Blanke, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Bonn (DE)
- Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation (IPS), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, 76344 Eggenstein-Lepoldshafen, Germany
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (DE)
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Hereon (DE)
- Paul Scherrer Institute (CH)
- Corresponding author
- Rühr, Peter T.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2021-06-16
- Volume
- 288
- Issue
- 1953
- Pages
- 20210616-20210616
- ISSN
- 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
- 0962-8452
- 1471-2954
- PMC
- PMC8206691
- OpenAlex
- W3167723763
- Cited by
- 16
- References
- 72
- Citations by year
- 2026: 5 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 2 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 2.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Repository KITopen (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DORA PSI (Paul Scherrer Institute) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Desy publication database (The Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- KITopen (cc-by)
- Funders
- Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (BL 1355/4-1)
- Helmholtz-Zentrum Geesthacht (I-20170190, I-20170896, I-20190019)
- H2020 European Research Council (754290)
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BL 1355/4-1)
- Paul Scherrer Institut (20171469)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Geometry and Topology › Morphological variations and asymmetry
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Animal Behavior and Reproduction
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics › Orthoptera Research and Taxonomy
- Keywords
- ontogenetic niche shift, adult head morphology, phenotypic disparity, Dermaptera, Plecoptera, trait correlation, macroevolution, insect phylogeny
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Ecology, Biological Evolution, Insecta, Metamorphosis, Biological, Phylogeny
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