Doctoral Dissertation Improvement: Evolution of Cercopithecoid Locomotion: A Morphometric, Phylogenetic, and Character Mapping Approach

本论文的研究结果将为旧大陆猴的运动进化过程提供一个新的假设。要收集的数据集非常广泛，包括49个物种的四个颅后元素。完成论文后，数据将提供给其他研究人员在线访问。一个在线数据库将允许那些可能没有资源自己收集这些数据的人，例如小型机构的本科生或发展中国家的学生。该研究还纳入了本科生，并正在培养一名女科学家。旧大陆猴（OWMs）——分布在非洲和亚洲的猴子——在灵长类动物中是独一无二的，因为它们在许多谱系中都有几个地面生活的物种。即使是现存的几乎完全是树栖或树栖的谱系，在它们的化石记录中也有高度陆生的成员。因此，owm的祖先通常被认为至少部分是陆生的，许多群体是在第二阶段进化出树栖行为的。支持这一结论的化石物种维多利亚猿（Victoriapithecus），是现存owm的近亲，表现出许多被认为是适应陆地生活的特征。然而，OWM运动进化的过程（即运动转变的时间和数量）仍不清楚。因此，本论文的目的是验证owm祖先是陆地动物的假设，并确定运动转换发生的时间和次数。为了实现这一目标，将在国内和国际几家博物馆对不同的活体和化石欧米姆样本进行四个颅后成分的测量，即肱骨、股骨、黄芪和跟骨。所使用的统计方法将试图根据其颅后成分的差异来区分树栖和陆栖物种。这种分析的好处是，对于运动模式未知的化石物种，可以通过提供化石最可能的运动行为的分析来分配给一个群体。然后，测量结果将被映射到一个系统发育图上，即现存物种和化石物种之间拟议关系的树状图，以确定owm祖先最可能的运动模式。

The results of this dissertation will provide a new hypothesis for the process by which locomotion evolved in Old World Monkeys. The dataset to be collected is extensive and includes four postcranial elements of 49 species. Data will be made accessible online to other researchers after completion of the dissertation. An online database will allow access to people who may not have the resources to collect such data on their own, such as undergraduates at small institutions or students in developing countries. The research also incorporates undergraduates and is training a female scientist.The Old World monkeys (OWMs)- monkeys that are distributed in Africa and Asia - are unique among primates for having several ground-dwelling, or terrestrial, species across many lineages. Even extant lineages that are almost strictly tree-dwelling, or arboreal, have highly terrestrial members in their fossil record. Therefore, the ancestor of OWMs is most commonly thought to have been at least partly terrestrial, with many groups secondarily evolving arboreal behavior. Support for this conclusion has been identified in the fossil species Victoriapithecus, a close relative of living OWMs that exhibits many traits thought to be adaptive for terrestriality. However, the process by which OWM locomotion evolved (i.e. the timing and number of locomotor transitions) remains unclear. Thus, the aim of this dissertation is to test the hypothesis that OWMs are ancestrally terrestrial, and to determine when and how many times locomotor transitions occurred. To accomplish this goal, measurements will be taken on four postcranial elements, the humerus, femur, astragalus, and calcaneus, of a diverse sample of living and fossil OWMs at several domestic and international museums. Statistical methods used will seek to discriminate arboreal and terrestrial species based on differences in their postcranial elements. The benefit of such an analysis is that fossil species, for which the locomotor mode is unknown, can be assigned to a group by the analysis providing the most likely locomotor behavior of the fossil. Measurements will then be mapped onto a phylogeny, a tree of proposed relationships among species, of living and fossil species to determine the most likely locomotor mode of the ancestor of OWMs.