Primate evolutionary morphology Assessing ecomorphological questions in extant and extinct anthropoids

Abstract

Understanding the evolution and ecology of animals and advancing predictions regarding particular behaviours in extant and extinct taxa involves an appreciation of the exact relationship between form and function, which has always been difficult to ascertain. This is in part because there is no univocal relationship between the form and function of a biological structure. Given the inherent difficulty of this topic, to elucidate the association between form and function in an ecological and evolutionary context it is necessary to coherently apply and combine a diversity of methods. This talk will focus on some possible approaches to tackle the relationship between form and function, providing different examples of how to combine geometric morphometrics and finite element analysis in evolutionary contexts using primate skeletal elements as biological case studies. As a result of the broadly varying demands and constraints of the diverse ecological niches where primates live, their behaviours are congruently complex, plastic and diverse, which means that the relationship between a particular morphology and certain behaviour might not be that straightforward. Therefore, it is particularly relevant to understand how primate form reflects adaptation to specific environmental contexts, and how these particular morphologies evolved since they represent a particularly challenging and interesting case study. In addition, analysing the correlation between form and an ecological function is not only relevant to understanding the morphological diversity observed in extant species, but also because it allows us to infer past behaviours in palaeobiological contexts.