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Unveiling the cryptic morphology and ontogeny of the Colombian Caiman crocodilus: a geometric morphometric approach

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Abstract

Caiman crocodilus is an alligatoroid broadly distributed in the neotropics from Mexico to Brazil, where Colombia is the only country that has the complete subspecies complex distributed in its territory. This species has been the focus of many genetic, ecological and morphological studies. However, these studies are limited to traditional morphology methods or have limitations to examine interspecific variation among the four subspecies reported in Colombia. This is the first study of intraspecific variation in the skull of Caiman crocodilus complex distributed in Colombia, using a two-dimensional approach of geometric morphometric on 122 post-hatching ontogenetic cranial series. Morphological differences between species and changes during ontogeny (snout increases its length and, skull roof and orbits decrease their proportions) that represents part of morphological changes in the cranial ontogeny of crocodilians were found. In the morphospace, there was a significant differentiation of C. crocodilus apaporiensis and C. crocodilus crocodilus from C. crocodilus fuscus and C. crocodilus chiapasius. Results from this study revealed that C. crocodilus apaporiensis is a differentiated group from the global complex as well as that the specimens of C. crocodilus chiapasius collected from Medem in Colombia may be showing cryptic morphology in some traits.

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Data accessibility

The datasets generated during the current study are going to be available in the [name] repository, [Persistent web link to datasets]. Details with the link will be added upon acceptance of publishing.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Alan Resetar, Joshua Mata and John Bates for their amazing support with this project. We also thank to the Senckenberg, Forschungsinstitute und Naturmuseen for their help. MAB is a PhD student thanks to the grant program No 647, 2014, from COLCIENCIAS, Colombia. This project was partially supported by a Field Museum of Natural History’s Science Visiting Scholarship in 2018. HB thanks to the FONDECYT DE INCIACION No. 11180366 and Proyecto Redes de Investigación REDI170182 from CONICYT.

Funding

This project was partially funded by a Science Visiting Scholarship from the Field Museum of Natural History; by FONDECYT DE INCIACION No. 11180366 and Proyecto Redes de Investigación REDI170182 from CONICYT.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Engineering Faculty, Universidad EAFIT, Medellín, Colombia

    Mónica Angulo-Bedoya & Santiago Correa

  2. Departamento de Biología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Tarapacá, Velasquez 1775, Arica, Chile

    Hugo A. Benítez

Authors
  1. Mónica Angulo-Bedoya
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  2. Santiago Correa
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  3. Hugo A. Benítez
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Contributions

MAB designed the study, collected the samples and performed morphometric measurements of sampled material and data analyses, MAB and HAB performed statistical analysis; MAB, SC and HAB wrote the manuscript; all authors contributed in improving the draft of the manuscript by adding valuable comments.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hugo A. Benítez.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical approval

No live animals were used in this study. The Field Museum of Natural History allowed MAB to use their collection for this project.

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Angulo-Bedoya, M., Correa, S. & Benítez, H.A. Unveiling the cryptic morphology and ontogeny of the Colombian Caiman crocodilus: a geometric morphometric approach. Zoomorphology 138, 387–397 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-019-00448-2

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