Environmental controls of species diversity represent a central research focus in evolutionary biology. In the marine realm, sharks are widely distributed, occupying mainly higher trophic levels and varied dietary preferences, mirrored by several morphological traits and behaviours. Recent comparative phylogenetic studies revealed that sharks present a fairly uneven diversification across habitats, from reefs to deep-water. We show preliminary evidence that morphological diversification (disparity) in the feeding system (mandibles) follows these patterns, and we tested hypotheses linking these patterns to morphological specialisation. We conducted a 3D geometric morphometric analysis and phylogenetic comparative methods on 145 specimens representing 90 extant shark species using computed tomography models. We explored how rates of morphological evolution in the jaw correlate with habitat, size, diet, trophic level, and taxonomic order. Our findings show a relationship between disparity and environment, with higher rates of morphological evolution in reef and deep-water habitats. Deep-water species display highly divergent morphologies compared to other sharks. Strikingly, evolutionary rates of jaw disparity are associated with diversification in deep water, but not in reefs. The environmental heterogeneity of the offshore water column exposes the importance of this parameter as a driver of diversification at least in the early part of clade history.
© 2023. The Author(s).