Dental microwear analysis has been employed in studies of a wide range of modern and fossil animals, yielding many insights into the biology/ecology of those taxa. Paleoanthropological studies have produced both expected and unexpected results (e.g.,…
Even though in vivo studies of mastication in living primates are often used to test functional and adaptive hypotheses explaining primate masticatory behavior, we currently have little data addressing how experimental procedures performed in the…
Resource distribution shapes many aspects of primate behavioral ecology. Though the spatial patterning of fruits, leaves, and insects has been explored among primate foods, comparatively less is known about exudate distributions. Tree exudates are a…
Animals must overcome the physical properties protecting foods to obtain nutrition. While animals can experience selection for traits that facilitate resource exploitation, specific feeding behaviors may entail multiple, different mechanical…
Free-ranging primates are confronted with the challenge of maintaining an optimal range of body temperatures within a thermally dynamic environment that changes daily, seasonally, and annually. While many laboratory studies have been conducted on…
Arboreal primates actively navigate a complex thermal environment that exhibits spatial, daily, and seasonal temperature changes. Thus, temperature measurements from stationary recording devices in or near a forest likely do not reflect the thermal…
Purpose: To evaluate differences in masticatory muscle function during chewing of model foods designed to differ in fracture strength between dentate subjects (n = 5, ages 59 to 68 years) versus patients treated with a maxillary conventional complete…
The jaw muscles play key functional roles during feeding. During contraction, a bioelectrical signal propagates along the muscle cell helping to coordinate muscle contraction. This signal can be measured via electromyography (EMG). Food scientists…
We lack a general understanding of how primates perform physiologically during feeding to cope with the challenges of their natural environments. We here discuss several methods for studying the ecological physiology of feeding in mantled howlers…
Recent morphometric analyses have led to dissimilar conclusions about whether the jaws of tree-gouging primates are designed to resist the purportedly large forces generated during this biting behavior. We further address this question by comparing…
Non-human primates demonstrate food preferences much like humans. We have little insight, however, into how those preferences impact oral processing in primates. To begin describing this relationship, we conducted a preliminary analysis measuring…
It was proposed that the power stroke in primates has two distinct periods of occlusal contact, each with a characteristic motion of the mandibular molars relative to the maxillary molars. The two movements are called phase I and phase IT, and they…
The Feeding Experiments End-user Database (FEED) is a research tool developed by the Mammalian Feeding Working Group at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center that permits synthetic, evolutionary analyses of the physiology of mammalian feeding.…
Descriptive and quantitative analyses of electromyograms (EMG) from the jaw adductors during feeding in mammals have demonstrated both similarities and differences among species in chewing motor patterns. These observations have led to a number of…
The goal of this study is to clarify the functional and biomechanical relationship between jaw morphology and in vivo masticatory loading in selenodont artiodactyls. We compare in vivo strains from the mandibular corpus of goats and alpacas to…
We investigated patterns of jaw-muscle coordination during rhythmic mastication in three species of ungulates displaying the marked transverse jaw movements typical of many large mammalian herbivores. In order to quantify consistent motor patterns…
In vivo studies, of jaw-muscle behavior have been integral factors in the development of our current understanding of the primate masticatory apparatus. However, even though it has been shown that food textures and mechanical properties influence…
