Iris Menéndez

Museum für Naturkunde - Leibniz Institute for Research on Evolution and Biodiversity | MFN

Ecological and evolutionary processes operate at different scales. Their consequences on the biota can be detected through changes in species diversity and community composition, with emerging patterns related to different factors. At larger geographical scales, such as continents or biogeographic realms, dispersal, speciation, and extinction are t...

The laurel forest biome, also known as subtropical or temperate evergreen forest, is characterized by a wet climate with abundant precipitation and moderately seasonal temperatures, with interspersed warm and cool seasons. Despite the winter season’s sparse vegetative activity, plant communities of this biome resemble the equatorial evergreen rainf...

The latitudinal gradient of species richness has long intrigued scientists, with various hypotheses proposed to explain this phenomenon. One hypothesis, rooted in the ecological theory, suggests that greater diversity of niches in tropical biomes facilitates the coexistence of a higher number of species. Considering the close relationship between s...

Biodiversity is distributed unevenly among lineages and regions, and understanding the processes generating these global patterns is a central goal in evolutionary research, particularly in light of the current biodiversity crisis. Here, we integrate phylogenetic relatedness with species diversity patterns in four major clades of living tetrapods (...

Species living in distinct habitats often experience unique ecological selective pressures, which can drive phenotypic divergence. However, how ecophenotypic patterns are affected by allometric trends and trait integration levels is less well understood. Here we evaluate the role of allometry in shaping body size and body form diversity in Pristuru...

There is a relationship between the diet of a species and its cranial morphology, although it depends on multiple factors that may interplay with it. Ecomorphological studies in modern species allow us to investigate such a relationship and use it to infer the diet of extinct species based on their cranial shape. We applied 2D geometric morphometri...

Dental microwear is the set of microscopic marks that form on the surface of the tooth during mastication. Quantifying its spatio-temporal variation within the same species allows us to know the variation of diet according to the availability of resources and the amount of grit ingested. Additionally, the thickness of dental enamel allows us to kno...

Identifying the drivers of adaptation is key to understanding the origin and evolution of diversity. Here we study the morphological evolution of tooth morphology, a classic example of a conserved structure, to gain insights into the conditions that can overcome resistance to evolutionary change. We use geometric morphometrics of the occlusal surfa...

Biomes are the ecological and evolutionary units in which we can divide the Earth attending to their biological community and physical environment. Large-scale properties and distribution of terrestrial biomes depend primarily on climatic factors, along with soil type, water availability and environmental disturbances, among others. These factors h...

Species living in distinct habitats often experience unique ecological selective pressures, which can drive phenotypic divergence. However, how ecophenotypic patterns are affected by allometric trends and trait integration levels is less well understood. Here we evaluate the role of allometry in shaping body size and shape diversity in Pristurus ge...

Biomes are climatically and biotically distinctive macroecological units that formed over geological time scales. Their features consolidate them as ‘evolutionary scenarios’, with their own diversification dynamics. Under the concept of phylogenetic niche conservatism, we assessed, for the first time, the evolution of biome occupation in birds. We...

Los cambios climáticos de los últimos millones de años han tenido un efecto directo en los sucesivos procesos de expansión, contracción y fragmentación de los biomas a escala global. Estas modificaciones en la distribución y configuración de los biomas han influido notablemente en la evolución de las más de 5000 especies actuales de mamíferos terre...

El microdesgaste dental es el conjunto de marcas microscópicas que se forman sobre la superficie del diente durante la masticación debidas a diversos factores como la dieta o la presencia de polvo y arena en el ambiente. Cuantificar la variación espacio-temporal en microdesgaste dentro de una misma especie nos permite conocer la variación de la die...

The resource‐use hypothesis, proposed by E.S. Vrba, states that habitat fragmentation caused by climatic oscillations would affect particularly biome specialists (species inhabiting only one biome), which might show higher speciation and extinction rates than biome generalists. If true, lineages would accumulate biome‐specialist species. This effec...

Birds and mammals independently evolved the highest metabolic rates among living animals¹. Their metabolism generates heat that enables active thermoregulation¹, shaping the ecological niches they can occupy and their adaptability to environmental change². The metabolic performance of birds, which exceeds that of mammals, is thought to have evolved...

Elisabeth S. Vrba’s resource-use hypothesis suggests that speciation in biomes subjected to successive expansion-contraction-fragmentation during periods of climatic change generates high frequency of species restricted to a single biome (stenobiomic species). We compiled biome occupation for all terrestrial mammals and, using Monte Carlo simulatio...

Island colonists are often assumed to experience higher levels of phenotypic diversification than continental taxa. However, empirical evidence has uncovered exceptions to this ‘island effect’. Here, we tested this pattern using the geckos of the genus Pristurus from continental Arabia and Africa and the Socotra Archipelago. Using a recently publis...

El evento de enfriamiento global del Mioceno medio ha sido descrito, a escala local, en el centro de la Península Ibérica (Cuenca de Madrid). Algunos yacimientos paleontológicos como Somosaguas (14,1 Ma) y Cerro de los Batallones (9 Ma) han sido ampliamente estudiados. Además, otros yacimientos situados temporalmente entre ellos, como los yacimient...

Island colonists are often assumed to experience higher levels of phenotypic diversification than their continental sister taxa. However, empirical evidence shows that exceptions to the familiar "island rule" do exist. In this study, we tested this rule using a nearly complete sampled mainland-island system, the genus Pristurus, a group of sphaerod...

Paleontology for conservation Human activities are leading to broad species and system declines. Prevention of such declines has led us to focus on either protection for species or protection for ecosystem function. Looking at past patterns of species and system change can help to inform our understanding of the long-term impacts of these strategie...

1. The shape of the tree of life is the result of shifting diversification rates, and identifying the factors driving these shifts is one of the main aims in evolutionary biology. Various biotic and abiotic factors have been proposed to have an impact on mammal diversification, such as climatic and tectonic changes, the acquisition of new traits, a...

In this work, we compared microwear features and enamel thickness from upper molars (M1 and M2) of extinct Xerinae squirrels from the Miocene of Namibia (Vulcanisciurus sp) and the Iberian Peninsula (Atlantoxerus nov. sp. and Heteroxerus rubricati). We also examined the microwear from young and adult specimens of one extant squirrel, Atlantoxerus g...

Multiple factors involved in the evolutionary transformation of the manus across the maniraptoran radiation, including its current morphology in modern birds, remain unexplored. Specifically, the morphological disparity of the manus has never been studied quantitatively, and there are no hypotheses about the possible mechanisms and constraints unde...

Two new paleontological and archaeological Android applications, DigApp and TaphonomApp, are presented in this manuscript. DigApp is intended to aid data collection, storage and management in archaeological and palaeontological excavations. DigApp allows easily recording of common field information such as spatial data and fossil identification dat...

Analysis of the percentage of conference contributions and participants in the congress committees that are women

The transformation of the hand from a prensil structure to a wing component across maniraptorans (including modern birds) is a key morphological transition in tetrapod evolution. Yet, it has never been studied quantitatively at a broad macroevolutionary scale. The sustained miniaturization occurring along the lineage towards crown birds suggests th...

The palaeontological heritage evaluation of the Somosaguas fossil geosite has been revised on the basis of scientific and sociocultural criteria. By means of this study have been proposed four new criteria that arise from new scientific and social trends as well as technological advances. A temporal comparison has been established with previous eva...

The resource-use hypothesis developed by Vrba predicts that specialist species have higher speciation and extinction rates than generalist ones, due to their higher susceptibility to resource restriction, which makes them more sensitive to environmental change, vicariance and directional selection. Here, we present the first test of the resource-us...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0186762.].

The study of how long-term changes affect metacommunities is a relevant topic, which involves the evaluation of connections among biological assemblages across different spatio-temporal scales, in order to fully understand links between global changes and macroevolutionary patterns. We applied multivariate statistical analyses and diversity tests u...

Under classical point of view, the formation of the Panama Isthmus during Pliocene (3 Ma ago) would have allowed the species interchange between North America and South America. This ecological and evolutionary process named Great American Biotic Interchange (GABI) would be determinant in the configuration of the current american biota. This proces...

The study of how long-term changes affect metacommunities is a relevant topic, that involves the evaluation of connections among biological assemblages across different spatio-temporal scales, in order to fully understand links between global changes and macroevolutionary patterns. We applied multivariate statistical analyses and diversity tests us...

We developed new quantitative palaeoclimatic inference models based on the body-size structure of mammal faunas from the Old World tropics and applied them to the Somosaguas fossil site (middle Miocene, central Iberian Peninsula). Twenty-six mammal species have been described at this site, including proboscideans, ungulates, carnivores, insectivore...

Modern Palaeotropical faunas used for models validation, body size data and climatic variables for each locality. (XLSX)

Coefficients and their significance for the regression models for climatic inference based on the body-size structure of the three faunal datasets. (XLSX)

Modern African faunas used in this work, body size data and climatic variables for each locality. (XLSX)

Climatic variables studied in this work. (XLSX)

Modern Asian faunas used in this work, body size data and climatic variables for each locality. (XLSX)

Rodents are the most speciose group of mammals and display a great ecological diversity. Despite the greater amount of ecomorphological information compiled for extant rodent species, studies usually lack of morphological data on dentition, which has led to difficulty in directly utilizing existing ecomorphological data of extant rodents for paleoe...

References for samples used in this study Collection number and references of the extant and extinct murine rodent samples used in this work.

Table with the calculated dataset of FC for each extant and extinct genus considered in this works after EFA Values of the Fourier Components for each extant and extinct genus considered in this work after Elliptic Fourier Analysis.

En este estudio se analizó el espectro de desgaste dental de los molares, superiores e inferiores, de individuos de las dos especies de roedores más abundantes registradas en el yacimiento de Somosaguas Sur: Megacricetodon collongensis (Mein, 1958) y Democricetodon larteti (Schaub, 1925). Los resultados muestran gran abundancia de molares poco desg...

Usually preservation and divulgation of a geological site of interest are con icting tasks. An alternative section to the GSSP of Fuentelsaz (Guadalajara, Spain) was previously proposed where the Toarcian-Aalenian limit (Lower-Middle Jurassic) could be, under Administration’s permission, visited and studied without compromising the stratotype. This...

Cite as: Menendez, I., Gomez Cano, A.R. & Hernandez Fernandez, M. 2016. A new mortality profile in fossil sites. In: New perspectives on the Evolution of Phanerozoic Biotas and Ecosystems Conference proceedings. Esther Manzanares, Humberto G. Ferrón, Maite Suñer, Borja Holgado, Vicente D. Crespo, Samuel Mansino, Ana Fagoaga, Rafael Marquina, Ignaci...

The Pliocene site of Layna is a karst filling in the Iberian System (López Martínez, 1989) placed on the northern edge of the Tagus Basin. Its outstanding abundance of mandibles and maxillas makes Layna a good test-case locality to apply statistical methods in studies of fossil assemblages, minimizing the possible biases present in poorer sites. Th...

Menéndez et al., 2015. Patrón de mortandad de Megacricetodon collongensis (MEIN, 1958) en Somosaguas Sur (Mioceno medio, Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid) In: Current Trends in Paleontology and Evolution (XIII EJIP · Conference Proceedings). L. Domingo, M. S. Domingo, O. Fesharaki, B. García Yelo, A.R. Gómez Cano, V. Hernández-Ballarín, D. Hontecillas, J...