Dental topography and diets of four old world monkey species

Abstract

Dental topographic analysis allows comparisons of variably worn teeth within and between species to infer relationships between dental form and diet in living primates, with implications for reconstructing feeding adaptations of fossil forms. Although analyses to date have been limited mainly to the M(2)s of a few primate taxa, these suggest that dental topographic analysis holds considerable promise. Still, larger samples including a greater range of species and different tooth types are needed to determine the potential of this approach. Here we examine dental topography of molar teeth of Cercocebus torquatus (n=48), Cercopithecus campbelli (n=50), Colobus polykomos (n=50), and Procolobus badius (n=50). This is the first such study of large samples of Old World monkeys, and the first to include analyses of both M(1)s and M(2)s. Average slope, relief, and surface angularity were computed and compared among tooth types, wear stages, and species. Results suggest that (1) data for M(1)s and M(2)s cannot be compared directly; (2) slope and relief decline with wear on M(2)s of all taxa, and M(1)s of the colobines, whereas angularity does not generally change except in the most worn specimens; and (3) folivorous colobines tend to have more sloping surfaces and more relief than do frugivorous cercopithecines, though angularity does not clearly separate taxa by diet.

Age‐related changes in molar topography and shearing crest length in a wild population of mountain Gorillas from Volcanoes National Park, Rwanda

“…The overwhelming signal from this study is that, like the case for many primates (Ungar and Williamson, 2000;M'Kirera and Ungar, 2003;Ungar and M'Kirera, 2003;Dennis et al, 2004;King et al, 2005;Bunn and Ungar, 2009;Klukkert et al, 2012;Cuozzo et al, 2014;Venkataraman et al, 2014), mountain gorillas lose molar occlusal slope and relief as they age (Table 2; Fig. 2).…”

“…RFI describes the surface relief of the occlusal table and is calculated as the ratio of 2D to 3D surface area (Ungar and Williamson, 2000;King et al, 2005). Although a handful of studies have investigated how the topography of teeth changes over time in known-age samples (Dennis et al, 2004;King et al, 2005;Cuozzo et al, 2014;Zohdy et al, 2014), most studies that use this dental topographic approach classify specimens into wear stages according to degree of dentine exposure, thereby limiting a full understanding of the rate at which wear progresses throughout life (e.g., Bunn and Ungar, 2009;Klukkert et al, 2012). Primates, including African apes, possess occlusal surfaces that decrease in slope and RFI with wear, but angularity has been reported to either decrease or be maintained with wear (Table 1).…”

“…Data on slope, angularity, and RFI were collected from each DEM according to standard protocols (Ungar and Williamson, 2000;M'Kirera and Ungar, 2003;Ungar and M'Kirera, 2003;King et al, 2005;Bunn and Ungar, 2009) using GRASS GIS. To measure the surface "complexity" of occlusal tables, we collected OPCR data using the software packages Surfer v. 8.0 (Golden Software and Surfer Manipulator (Evans et al, 2007) following established methods (Evans et al, 2007;Evans and Jernvall, 2009).…”

Dental topography of platyrrhines and prosimians: Convergence and contrasts

“…Various geometric algorithms are then used to quantify aspects of dental form, such as curvature, relief, and complexity of molar occlusal surfaces. Variation in dental topography has been shown to closely reflect variation in the types of foods consumed by living primates-topographic relief, curvature, and complexity all tend to increase in species with sharper, higher cusps and longer shearing crests, and correspondingly tend to differentiate primates that primarily rely on insects, leaves, or fruits (M'Kirera and Merceron et al, 2006;Boyer, 2008;Bunn and Ungar, 2009;Bunn et al, 2011). The aspects of shape quantified by each dental topographic variable are metrically independent, although they often correlate with each other (Boyer et al, 2010;Bunn et al, 2011).…”

Dental Shape Variability in Cercopithecoid Primates: A Model for the Taxonomic Attribution of Macaques from Roman Archaeological Contexts

“…Tooth morphology in mammals has been widely used in palaeontological research for inferring both dietary adaptations [Anapol and Lee, 1994;Bunn and Ungar, 2009;Bunn et al, 2011;Cooke, 2011] and phylogenetic relationships [Bailey, 2000[Bailey, , 2002Skinner et al, 2009Skinner et al, , 2010Liu et al, 2010;Benazzi et al, 2011;Singleton et al, 2011] because of their abundance and good preservation in the fossil record [Polly, 2001;Bailey, 2004;Hillson, 2005]. Furthermore, dental shape constitutes a direct indicator of the evolutionary interaction between the organism and its ecology [White, 2009] and is not affected by remodelling during the lifespan in response to environmental factors, as is the case of bones [Jernvall and Jung, 2000;Bailey, 2004;Hillson, 2005].…”