Age-Related Tooth Wear Differs between Forest and Savanna Primates

Abstract

Tooth wear in primates is caused by aging and ecological factors. However, comparative data that would allow us to delineate the contribution of each of these factors are lacking. Here, we contrast age-dependent molar tooth wear by scoring percent of dentine exposure (PDE) in two wild African primate populations from Gabonese forest and Kenyan savanna habitats. We found that forest-dwelling mandrills exhibited significantly higher PDE with age than savanna yellow baboons. Mandrills mainly feed on large tough food items, such as hard-shell fruits, and inhabit an ecosystem with a high presence of mineral quartz. By contrast, baboons consume large amounts of exogenous grit that adheres to underground storage organs but the proportion of quartz in the soils where baboons live is low. Our results support the hypothesis that not only age but also physical food properties and soil composition, particularly quartz richness, are factors that significantly impact tooth wear. We further propose that the accelerated dental wear in mandrills resulting in flatter molars with old age may represent an adaptation to process hard food items present in their environment.

Social shaping of voices does not impair phenotype matching of kinship in mandrills

“…All individuals of the three mandrill populations are regularly captured using blowpipe intramuscular injections of anaesthetics (for example, refs 16,36), and blood samples are collected on every occasion. DNA extractions from white cells were performed using QIAamp DNA Blood Mini Kits (Hilden, Germany) and microsatellite genotyping was carried out using 12 primer pairs (as per ref.…”

Dental microwear differences between eastern and southern African fossil bovids and hominins

“…In sum, while grit undoubtedly impacts tooth wear 9,13,14 , the lack of a consistent location signal among the tribes suggests that differences in microwear between eastern and southern African hominins are likely not a result of abrasive load alone. Diet remains the most plausible explanation for the variation in dental microwear among species.…”

“…10 But they do raise the question: Is there a consistent relationship between environmental-grit level and microwear? While it is clear that soil quartz levels can play an important role in tooth wear 13,14 , studies of mammals living in different settings today have failed to find that grit obscures diet-related microwear signals 15 .…”

Mortalidad excepcional en los cricétidos (Rodentia) del Mioceno medio de Somosaguas (Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid)

“…No obstante, debido a los elevados niveles de fragmentación de los fósiles de Somosaguas y, en particular, a que los restos de roedores suelen estar dominados por piezas dentales aisladas, no podemos utilizar aquellos métodos que se basan en parámetros derivados de restos óseos completos. Por otro lado, se pueden inferir las edades relativas de muerte analizando el desarrollo y la erupción de las piezas dentales , contabilizando las capas crecimiento anual de dentina (Laws, 1952;Hohn et al 1989), o mediante el desgaste dental (Freudenthal et al, 2002;Galbany et al, 2014).…”