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Fig. 1 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Fig. 1

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

Fig. 1

a Pruned phylogenetic tree depicting relationships between major snake families in this study. Colubriformes is a clade that includes all fanged snakes. b Cranial morphology for a single representative species from each family. c Segmented maxillary bones (which hold fangs, if present) from (b) reveal diversity in maxillary and dental morphology across families. Viperidae shows long, forward-positioned and rotatable (solenoglyphous) fangs. Forward-positioned but fixed (proteroglyphous) fangs are shown on the Elapid skull. A variety of rear-fanged (opisthoglyphous) phenotypes with different combinations of enlargement and grooving are shown on lamprophiid and colubrid representatives. d Schematic representation of average maxillary morphology, where line length represents maxillary length, teeth are shown as circles scaled by size, and tooth phenotype is represented by circle color. Circles represent rank-order of teeth on maxillary bone, rather than position, for simplicity. * “missing tooth” represents a tooth that was missing in the specimen as inferred from examination of sockets on maxillary bone, not a gap in tooth distribution

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