Data from: A rich diversity of opercle bone shape among teleost fishes

The opercle is a prominent craniofacial bone supporting the gill cover in all bony fish and has been the subject of morphological, developmental, and genetic investigation. We surveyed the shapes of this bone among 110 families spanning the teleost tree and examined its pattern of occupancy in a principal component-based morphospace. Contrasting with expectations from the literature that suggest the local morphospace would be only sparsely occupied, we find primarily dense, broad filling of the morphological landscape, indicating rich diversity. Phylomorphospace plots suggest that dynamic evolution underlies the observed spatial patterning. Evolutionary transits through the morphospaces are sometimes long, and occur in a variety of directions. The trajectories seem to represent both evolutionary divergences and convergences, the latter supported by convevol analysis. We suggest that that this pattern of occupancy reflects the various adaptations of different groups of fishes, seemingly paralleling their diverse marine and freshwater ecologies and life histories. Opercle shape evolution within the acanthomorphs, spiny ray-finned fishes, appears to have been especially dynamic.

鳃盖骨（opercle）是所有硬骨鱼类中支撑鳃盖的关键颅面骨骼，长期以来都是形态学、发育生物学与遗传学领域的重要研究对象。我们针对覆盖真骨鱼类系统发育树的110个科类群，调研了该骨骼的形态变异特征，并基于主成分分析构建的形态空间，考察了其形态占据模式。与此前文献中提出的"该局部形态空间仅会被稀疏占据"的预期相悖，我们发现其整体呈现出密集且广泛的形态空间填充特征，这表明该骨骼拥有极为丰富的形态多样性。系统发育形态空间绘图结果显示，动态演化是塑造当前空间分布格局的核心演化动力。形态空间内的演化跃迁有时跨度较大，且沿多个不同方向发生。这些演化轨迹同时体现了趋异演化与趋同演化，其中趋同演化得到了形态空间趋同演化分析（convevol）的支持。我们认为，该形态占据模式反映了不同鱼类类群的各类适应性演化特征，其似乎与这些类群多样的海洋、淡水生态位及生活史特征高度匹配。棘鳍鱼类（acanthomorphs，带棘辐鳍鱼类）类群内的鳃盖骨形态演化，尤其展现出极强的动态性。