Phylogenetic Analysis of Surface Areas of Mammals

Abstract

Traditionally, aquatic and terrestrial mammals have been believed to differ in the allometric relationship of surface area and body mass. Such differences commonly are assumed to be of adaptive significance. However, no previous analyses have explicitly compared these groups or accounted for bias resulting from phylogenetic relationships. I used Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the relationship of surface area to body mass of 56 aquatic and terrestrial species of mammals. These procedures specifically incorporate the phylogenetic structure of the data. There was no support for the assumption of differing mass-specific surface areas of marine mammals and terrestrial mammals.