PI: Adam Hartstone-Rose

Key collaborators:  Jonathan Perry, Chris Wall, Steve Churchill, Damiano Marchi

Project Title:  Various projects including comparative masticatory anatomy studies, gape and diet studies, forearm muscle studies, etc.

Area of research (eg. Behavior, cognition, biomechanics, systematics, genomics, etc.):  Anatomy and dietary adaptations.

Please provide brief (1-3 sentences) answers to the following questions:

1. What is your main research question?
   I study the relationship between the masticatory anatomy and diet.  Most of my work focuses on carnivore adaptations to flesh vs. bone diets (my dissertation), but I work on similar projects with lemurs (frugivory vs. folivory) as well – mostly with Jon Perry.  Ultimately this work aims at reconstructing the dietary behavior of extinct species.  I also use lemur cadavers for teaching anatomy to my students.
2. Briefly describe  your project design.
   The most recent DLC project that I worked on (aside from the teaching I continuously do with DLC cadavers) is a project that I worked on with Jon that is being published in AJPA.  In that project we studied the bite sizes of 18 species of strepsirrhines by feeding them three different types of foods cut to several different exact sizes.  We were able to document dramatic dietary adaptations for folivory and frugivory.
3. How will working with lemurs/lemur samples help achieve your research goals?
   The DLC is fairly unique in that it affords us the opportunity to study both the behavior of live animals and the anatomy of their conspecifics.  While this is occasionally possible at other facilities (like zoos), the DLC houses some relatively rare animals in captivity with sample sizes that are unavailable at most institutions.  Also, access to the cadavers for research purposes is much better organized at the DLC than most other facilities.
4. What interesting results  have you found?
   We found that there are massive adaptations in the soft-tissue anatomy of strepsirrhines to different diets.  That is, folivores cannot open their mouths very wide, regardless of the material properties of their foods, while frugivores can consume exceedingly large pieces of foods – especially soft foods.  The best example of this is with Varecia (the ruffed lemurs).  Individuals in this genus can eat pieces of melon, without biting them into smaller pieces that are larger than their brains!
5. Relevant/recent publications: