Morphospace plot of Insectivore Mammals’ Mandibles; Preliminary evidence for morphological convergence and disparity Method We photographed the skulls and mandibles of 90 species from 4 mammal orders (Afrosoricida, Soricomorpha, Erinaceomorpha, Notoryctemorphia). We placed landmark points and semilandmark curves on the pictures to summarise their shape (Figure 2). Morphological similarities were analysed using geometric morphometric 2 techniques. References and Acknowledgments 1.Olson, L.E Tenrecs. Current Biology, 23, R5-R8 2.Adams, D.C., Rohlf, F.J., Slice, D.E Geometric morphometrics: Ten years of progress following the “revolution”. Italian Journal of Zoology, 71, Jones, K.E., Jon, B., Cardillo, M., et al., PanTHERIA: A species-level database of life history, ecology and geography of extant and recently extinct mammals. Ecology, 90 :2648 Thank you to François Gould for his geometric morphometrics help and advice. I also gratefully acknowledge the assistance of museum staff during my time at their collections. Thank you to the Irish Research Council EMBARK Initiative for funding this research. Conclusions and Future Work Patterns of morphospace occupation (Figure 3) indicate both morphological dissimilarities within tenrecs and similarities among tenrecs and other mammals. We will quantify this putative convergence among tenrecs and other mammals using morphological and phylogenetic distances among species. Ongoing analyses of both mandibles and skulls will provide further insight into morphological convergences among insectivore mammals. After quantifying morphological convergence and disparity, we will use existing data sets (e.g. PanTHERIA 3, LANDSAT) and range maps from the IUCN to compare ecological niche similarities among the taxa. It will be interesting to establish whether morphological and ecological convergences among tenrecs and other insectivore species are correlated. The methods we develop and results of our research will have useful applications in diverse research areas including functional diversity biodiversity monitoring and conservation. Introduction Tenrecs (Tenrecidae) are often identified as being both morphologically disparate from each other and convergent with hedgehogs, moles, shrews and even otters (Figure 1) 1. However, previous studies have neither quantified the degree of convergence among tenrecs and other species nor identified possible reasons for the occurrence of these patterns. Our aim is to address these significant gaps in our understanding of tenrec evolution. In addition, the methods we develop will be useful for assessing the relationship between morphological and ecological convergence across taxa. Sive Finlay 1,2, Natalie 1 School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2, Ireland 2 Trinity Centre for Biodiversity Research, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland Figure 1 : Superficial morphological convergence: Juvenile lesser hedgehog tenrecs (Echinops telfairi) at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Washington DC †. † Tenrec picture kindly provided by Kenton Kerns and Maria Montgomery at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Washington DC Figure 1 : Superficial morphological convergence: Juvenile lesser hedgehog tenrecs (Echinops telfairi) at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Washington DC †. † Tenrec picture kindly provided by Kenton Kerns and Maria Montgomery at the Smithsonian National Zoo, Washington DC Figure 2: Photograph of a giant otter shrew (Potamogale velox) mandible with the 7 landmarks (red points) and 4 curves (blue lines) we used to compare the mandible morphologies of our study species. Figure 3: Morphospace plot of insectivore mandibles: Landmark coordinates were Procrustes-superimposed to remove non-shape variation 2 and the mean shape coordinates for each species were used for a principal components analysis. Each point represents average mandible shape of a species, points are coloured by family group. Warp grids 2 depict the change in mandible shape represented by the extreme points on each PC axis.