Skip to main content
Fig. 3 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Fig. 3

From: What makes a fang? Phylogenetic and ecological controls on tooth evolution in rear-fanged snakes

Fig. 3

a Dental morphospace for all snakes in this study, visualized using the first two components of a phylogenetic PCA on univariate dental traits. Convex hulls group species’ points by family. Vipers occupy a distinct region of morphospace, with short maxillary bones and large fangs. Elapids are adjacent to vipers, but overlap in morphospace with some rear-fanged species within Homalopsidae and Colubridae. bd First and second principal components from a pPCAfor colubrid subfamilies. Raw data for pPCA is the same as in A with the exception of one trait: fang length is replaced with relative posterior tooth length (RPTL) as a colubrid-specific metric of measuring the opisthoglyphous condition. Convex hulls in B-D group species by prey subjugation method: medically-significant (MS) venom, non-medically-significant (NMS) venom, constriction, both venom & constriction (V & C) and neither venom nor constriction. Across all subclades, maxillary length explains most variation in dentition. Venomous colubrids across all subfamilies but particularly B&C fill morphospace similar to that occupied by front fanged lineages in A. ML = maxillary length; MT = number of maxillary teeth; RPTL = relative posterior tooth length, a NE/NV colubriform specific measure of fang length

Back to article page