| Grant number: | 19/21787-5 |
| Support Opportunities: | Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree |
| Start date: | March 01, 2020 |
| End date: | August 31, 2020 |
| Field of knowledge: | Biological Sciences - Zoology - Paleozoology |
| Principal Investigator: | Max Cardoso Langer |
| Grantee: | Guilherme Hermanson Souza |
| Supervisor: | Roger Benson |
| Host Institution: | Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil |
| Institution abroad: | University of Oxford, England |
| Associated to the scholarship: | 19/02086-6 - Evolution of skull shape in extinct and extant turtles, BP.MS |
Abstract Testudinata is a diverse group of reptiles, with wide-ranging ecomorphologies amongboth extinct and extant taxa. Representatives of the group can be found in fully aquatic tocompletely terrestrial environments, which offer them different sorts of resources andalso place distinct demands on morphology (e.g. head shape). Given the many dietarypreferences presented by turtles, a wide range of palate morphologies is seen across thedifferent extant species. Other, unique palate morphologies are seen only in fossils ofextinct species. In this context, phylogenetic comparative methods provide importanttools to investigate the evolutionary patterns of phenotypic traits (in this case, palateshape). Previous work on turtle skull shape either used 2D data, or excluded fossil species.We propose the first study to account for the 3D shape of the palate of turtles in aphylogenetic context, aiming to characterise the ecomorphological patterns of turtlepalatal evolution through their entire evolutionary history. We will analyse the shapevariation of extant species and test the correlation of their morphology to diet, using anew multivariate scheme in which several feeding behaviours can be assigned to eachspecies, recognising that multiple factors can influence palate morphology. These resultswill be used to quantitatively infer feeding preferences of extinct taxa, which haspreviously been done only qualitatively (i.e. analogies). In doing so we aim to betterunderstand the diets of extinct turtles along the ecological context of turtle evolutionspanning 230 million years. | |
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