Evaluating How Behavioral, Environmental and Physiological Factors have Influenced the Evolution of Mammalian Erythrocyte Size

• Main Author: Unruh, Kelley Dawn
• Language: EN
• Published: California State University, Long Beach 2018
• Subjects: Biology|Evolution & development
• Online Access: http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10827907

<p> This study examines how the different behavioral, environmental and physiological factors might be influencing the essential physiological trait of erythrocyte mean cell diameters (MCD). At present no other study has explored the effects of these factors. Erythrocyte MCD for 153 species were collected from recent literary sources and compared to erythrocyte MCDs collected by Gulliver (1875), genome sizes and spleen sizes were also collected from a variety of literary sources. This data was analyzed using R with phylogenetic generalized least square analyses against several different behavioral, environmental and physiological factors. From these analyses, I found that as mammal mass and length increase the erythrocyte MCD also increases and as mammals move into higher elevations and warmer climates erythrocyte MCD decreases. All other behavioral, environmental, and physiological factors did not have an influence on erythrocyte MCD. These data did not support hypotheses previously offered by the other studies done on erythrocytes. Further research needs to be conducted on this topic because other factors that influence erythrocyte MCD may still exist that were not examined in this study.</p><p>