Can morphospace shed light on cave bear spatial-temporal variation? Population dynamics of Ursus spelaeus from Romualdova pećina and Vindija, (Croatia)

Cave bear (Ursus spelaeus) behavioural ecology, as evidenced through population dynamics, is crucial forimproving our understanding of why this species went extinct. Despite the fact that the bones of thisspecies have been recovered in very large quantities, allowing for extensive study, fundamental questionsregarding its life-ways remain unanswered. We present research using geometric morphometrics (GMM)on molars to investigate population structure based on morphological variation over space and throughtime. This preliminary work deliberately restricts the geographic catchment area for sampling, allowingfor a meaningful appraisal of scale of variation within a spatially conservative framework. Our resultsdemonstrate no significant morphological variation evident temporally and a small but statisticallysignificant degree of shape variation geographically despite the proximity of the study localities. Thesefindings suggest that an accurate quantitative exploration of morphospace may be an important source ofevidence on environmental and climatic shifts and the resulting influence on animal morphology.