Aliaga-Martínez Andrés, Romero Alejandro, Galbany Jordi, Hernández-Aguilar R Adriana, Pérez-Pérez Alejandro
Departament de Biologia Evolutiva, Secció de Zoologia i Antropologia Biològica, Ecologia i Ciències Ambientals, Universitat de Barcelona, Av. Diagonal, 643, Barcelona, 08028, Spain.
Departamento de Biotecnología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Alicante, AC 99, Alicante, 03080, Spain.
Am J Phys Anthropol. 2017 Jul;163(3):462-473. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.23219. Epub 2017 Mar 28.
Two-dimensional dental microwear analyses on occlusal and nonocclusal enamel surfaces have been widely applied to reconstruct the feeding behaviors of extant primates and to infer ecological adaptations in fossil hominins. To date, analyses of dental microwear texture, using three-dimensional, Scale-Sensitive Fractal Analysis approaches has only been applied to occlusal surfaces. Here, for the first time, we apply this 3D proxy to buccal enamel surfaces of catarrhine primates of known feeding ecologies to assess the utility of nonocclusal microwear texture variables as indicators of dietary habits.
Buccal microwear texture attributes were collected from high-resolution second molar casts in a sample of seven extant African catarrhine taxa with differing dietary behaviors. A white-light confocal microscope with a 100× objective lens was used to record six microwear texture variables that assess complexity, anisotropy, heterogeneity, and textural fill volume.
The physical properties and variation in hardness of ingested foods is reflected by significant differences in the microwear variables on buccal enamel surfaces between species, which is in agreement with early reports using 2D microwear signatures of the same samples. Species that consume hard brittle items showed high buccal enamel complexity and low anisotropy values, while folivorous species that consume tough foods revealed high anisotropy and low complexity enamel patterns.
Buccal microwear texture analysis on enamel surfaces clearly reflects diet-related variation in nonhuman primates. Our findings indicate that microwear texture attributes on nonworking enamel surfaces provide an alternative procedure for reconstructing dietary behavior when wear facets on occlusal surfaces are lacking.
对咬合面和非咬合面釉质表面进行二维牙齿微磨损分析，已广泛应用于重建现存灵长类动物的进食行为，并推断化石人类的生态适应性。迄今为止，使用三维尺度敏感分形分析方法对牙齿微磨损纹理的分析仅应用于咬合面。在此，我们首次将这种三维指标应用于已知进食生态的狭鼻猴类灵长动物的颊面釉质表面，以评估非咬合面微磨损纹理变量作为饮食习惯指标的效用。
从七个具有不同饮食行为的现存非洲狭鼻猴类群样本的高分辨率第二磨牙铸型中收集颊面微磨损纹理属性。使用配备100倍物镜的白光共聚焦显微镜记录六个微磨损纹理变量，这些变量用于评估复杂性、各向异性、异质性和纹理填充体积。
物种之间颊面釉质表面微磨损变量的显著差异反映了所摄入食物硬度的物理特性和变化，这与早期使用相同样本的二维微磨损特征的报告一致。食用硬脆食物的物种颊面釉质复杂性高，各向异性值低，而食用坚韧食物的食叶物种则显示出高各向异性和低复杂性的釉质模式。
釉质表面的颊面微磨损纹理分析清楚地反映了非人类灵长类动物与饮食相关的差异。我们的研究结果表明，当咬合面缺乏磨损面时，非工作釉质表面的微磨损纹理属性为重建饮食行为提供了一种替代方法。
