Feeding patterns and bone response in the jaw: Models for understanding primate morphology

动物骨骼的形状与其行为和饮食的各个方面有关，这种关系使科学家能够根据已灭绝物种的骨骼化石来提取有关其生物学和生态学的线索。然而，这种形式-功能关系的复杂性并没有被完全理解。这个项目将模拟一系列的摄食模式，就像在野生灵长类动物中发现的那样，以更好地理解摄食、机械食物特性和颌形之间的关系。这些发现将为骨骼生物学和进化的适应场景提供信息，包括灵长类动物和我们自己的人类血统。这项研究将促进研究和教育的跨学科方法，并使STEM领域代表性不足的群体成员参与进来。它将使博士后研究员、研究生和本科生以及当地的STEM教师和学生受益，他们都将参加实验室学徒、科学演示和与公众和当地机构的外联活动。对社会的另一个好处包括为下一代学术研究人员和教育工作者发展一个新的培训环境。进一步了解骨骼如何响应外部负荷模式，对于外科手术后硬组织的生长和维持，以及开发抗骨质疏松性骨丢失的治疗方法也是至关重要的。饮食相关负荷模式变化的生态地貌重要性是灵长类生物学和进化中的一个关键问题。虽然颌骨比例通常被用来推断摄食生态，但饮食和表型多样性之间的种间联系是可变的，这给准确的化石重建带来了问题。这个项目将量化日常进食模式的变化对颌骨生长和功能的长期影响，在一个与灵长类动物有重要相似之处的自然哺乳动物模型中。研究人员将评估饱和反应是否存在于多个骨骼结构水平上，以及这种差异如何影响骨骼性能。当骨细胞在长期负荷过程中变得不敏感时，就会出现“饱和反应”，这反过来又会抑制硬组织的形成，尽管持续存在常规的机械刺激。每日摄食活动模式的时间变化可能代表了导致口腔饱和反应的生态因素。由于运动活动在一定程度上是由喂养方式的模式决定的，这项研究还可能确定成骨刺激和整个骨骼的解剖协变之间的生态相关性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The shape of an animal's skeleton is related to aspects of its behavior and diet, and this relationship allows scientists to extract clues about the biology and ecology of extinct species based on their fossilized bones. However, the complexities of such form-function relationships are not fully understood. This project will model a wide range of feeding patterns like those found in wild primates to better understand the relationship among feeding, mechanical food properties, and jaw form. The findings will inform adaptive scenarios about skeletal biology and evolution, including in primates and our own human lineage. This study will foster interdisciplinary approaches to research and education and involve members of under-represented groups in STEM fields. It will benefit a postdoctoral fellow, graduate students and undergraduates as well as local STEM teachers and students, all of whom will participate in lab apprenticeships, scientific presentations and outreach to the public and local institutions. Another benefit to society includes development of a novel training environment for the next generation of academic researchers and educators. Advancing knowledge about how the skeleton responds external loading patterns is also critical for hard-tissue growth and maintenance after surgical intervention, and for developing therapies to counter osteoporotic bone loss.The ecomorphological importance of variation in diet-related loading patterns is a key issue in primate biology and evolution. Although jaw proportions are commonly used to infer feeding ecology, the interspecific link between diet and phenotypic diversity is variable, which poses a problem for accurate fossil reconstructions. This project will quantify the long-term effects of variation in the modality of daily feeding patterns on jaw growth and function in a naturalistic mammalian model of dietary loading with important similarities to primates. The investigators will assess if a saturation response is resident at more than one level of skeletal architecture and how such variation underlies skeletal performance. The "saturation response" occurs when bone cells become desensitized during protracted loading, which in turn inhibits hard-tissue formation despite the continued presence of routine mechanical stimuli. Temporal variation in daily patterns of feeding activity is likely to represent an ecological factor that induces the saturation response in the oral cavity. As locomotor activity is in part dictated by patterns of feeding modality, this study may also identify the ecological correlates of osteogenic stimuli and anatomical covariation throughout the skeleton.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.