rsos.royalsocietypublishing.org Research Cite this article: Sánchez-Villagra MR, Segura V, Geiger M, Heck L, Veitschegger K, Flores D. 2017 On the lack of a universal pattern associated with mammalian domestication: diferences in skull growth trajectories across phylogeny. R. Soc. open sci. 4: 170876. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170876 Received: 10 July 2017 Accepted: 11 September 2017 Subject Category: Biology (whole organism) Subject Areas: evolution/taxonomy and systematics/developmental biology Keywords: ontogeny, development, dog, cat, horse, modularity Author for correspondence: Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra e-mail: m.sanchez@pim.uzh.ch Electronic supplementary material is available online at https://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9. fgshare.c.3904912. On the lack of a universal pattern associated with mammalian domestication: diferences in skull growth trajectories across phylogeny Marcelo R. Sánchez-Villagra 1 , Valentina Segura 2 , Madeleine Geiger 1,3 , Laura Heck 1 , Kristof Veitschegger 1 and David Flores 2 1 Palaeontological Institute and Museum, University of Zurich, Karl-Schmid-Strasse 4, 8006 Zurich, Switzerland 2 Unidad Ejecutora Lillo, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científcas y Técnicas-Fundación Miguel Lillo, Argentina 3 Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, Downing Street, Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, UK As shown in a taxonomically broad study, domestication modifies postnatal growth. Skull shape across 1128 individuals was characterized by 14 linear measurements, comparing 13 pairs of wild versus domesticated forms. Among wild forms, the boar, the rabbit and the wolf have the highest proportion of allometric growth, explaining in part the great morphological diversity of the domesticated forms of these species. Wild forms exhibit more isometric growth than their domesticated counterparts. Multivariate comparisons show that dogs and llamas exhibit the greatest amount of differences in trajectories with their wild counterparts. The least amount is recorded in the pig–boar, and camel and horse pairs. Bivariate analyses reveal that most domesticated forms have growth trajectories different from their respective wild counterparts with regard to the slopes. In pigs and camels slopes are shared and intercepts are different. There is a trajectory extension in most domesticated herbivores and the contrary pattern in carnivorous forms. However, there is no single, universal and global pattern of paedomorphosis or any other kind of heterochrony behind the morphological diversification that accompanies domestication. 2017 The Authors. Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.