Cope's rule

Cope's rule states that lineages increase in size over evolutionary time.
Juramaia was one of the earliest mammals, a basal eutherian from the Late Jurassic, no more than 10 cm long.
The African bush elephant, a modern mammal, may reach a height of almost 4 metres.

Cope's rule, named after American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope,[1][2] postulates that population lineages tend to increase in body size over evolutionary time.[3] It was never actually stated by Cope, although he favoured the occurrence of linear evolutionary trends.[4] It is sometimes also known as the Cope–Depéret rule,[5] because Charles Depéret explicitly advocated the idea.[6] Theodor Eimer had also done so earlier.[4] The term "Cope's rule" was apparently coined by Bernhard Rensch,[1] based on the fact that Depéret had "lionized Cope" in his book.[4][a] While the rule has been demonstrated in many instances, it does not hold true at all taxonomic levels, or in all clades. Larger body size is associated with increased fitness for a number of reasons, although there are also some disadvantages both on an individual and on a clade level: clades comprising larger individuals are more prone to extinction, which may act to limit the maximum size of organisms.

  1. ^ a b Rensch, B. (September 1948). "Histological Changes Correlated with Evolutionary Changes of Body Size". Evolution. 2 (3): 218–230. doi:10.2307/2405381. JSTOR 2405381. PMID 18884663.
  2. ^ Stanley, S. M. (March 1973). "An Explanation for Cope's Rule". Evolution. 27 (1): 1–26. doi:10.2307/2407115. JSTOR 2407115. PMID 28563664.
  3. ^ Hone DW; Benton MJ (2005). "The evolution of large size: how does Cope's Rule work?" (PDF). Trends in Ecology and Evolution. 20 (1): 4–6. doi:10.1016/j.tree.2004.10.012. PMID 16701331.
  4. ^ a b c d Polly, P. D.; Alroy, J. (1998-10-02). "Cope's Rule". Science. 282 (5386): 50–51. Bibcode:1998Sci...282...47P. doi:10.1126/science.282.5386.47f. PMID 9786796. S2CID 41642689.
  5. ^ Monroe, M. J.; Bokma, F. (2010). "Little evidence for Cope's rule from Bayesian phylogenetic analysis of extant mammals". Journal of Evolutionary Biology. 23 (9): 2017–2021. doi:10.1111/j.1420-9101.2010.02051.x. PMID 20629852. S2CID 20184065.
  6. ^ Charles Jean Julien Depéret (1907). Les transformations du monde animal (in French). E. Flammarion.
  7. ^ Cope, E. D. (February 1885). "On the Evolution of the Vertebrata, Progressive and Retrogressive". American Naturalist. 19 (2): 140–148. doi:10.1086/273881. JSTOR 2450032.
  8. ^ Cope, E. D. (March 1885). "On the Evolution of the Vertebrata, Progressive and Retrogressive (Continued)". American Naturalist. 19 (3): 234–247. doi:10.1086/273900. JSTOR 2450075. S2CID 84538510.
  9. ^ Cope, E. D. (April 1885). "On the Evolution of the Vertebrata, Progressive and Retrogressive (Continued)". American Naturalist. 19 (4): 341–353. doi:10.1086/273923. JSTOR 2450836.


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