Mahima Srikanth
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Research Mentor(s): Laura MacLatchy, Professor
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Anthropology, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 3 (1pm-1:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 10
Presenter: 5
Abstract
One important factor in understanding how locomotor behavior and anatomy interact is bone shape. While the effects of interspecies locomotor differences on bone shape are understood, less is known about the effects of locomotor changes across an individual’s lifetime on bone shape. This study seeks to understand the effects of locomotor changes across lifespans of non-human apes on bone shape. We predict that bone cross sections will be rounder in shape during periods of high arboreal locomotion, because bones are stressed along multiple axes when climbing, while bones will be more elliptical in shape during periods of high terrestrial locomotion, because movement will be mostly along a forward-moving axis. Cross sectional bone data was collected from the Hamann-Todd Osteological Collection and the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology. The femur, humerus, radius, and tibia of Pan troglodytes (n=70), Gorilla gorilla (n=46), and Pongo (n=22) were scanned at the 25%, 50%, and 75% bone lengths using a peripheral quantitative computed tomography (pQCT) scanner. Images were analyzed using BoneJ and ImageJ to collect cross-sectional properties and linear distances along the longest and shortest cross-sectional axes. Data was analyzed using ANCOVAs to test differences in linear measurements across species at different ages. Linear regressions will also be used to assess differences in patterns of change throughout lifetimes. The study is ongoing and data is still being collected, so no results have been found yet. This study will increase our understanding of bone’s responsiveness to locomotion across development and can be applied to the discovery of locomotor patterns of fossil apes.
Authors: Mahima Srikanth, Miranda N. Cosman, Laura MacLatchy
Research Method: Library/Archival/Internet Research
