Stubby versus stabby: A preliminary analysis of canine microwear in primates: Implication for inferring ingestive behaviors.

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 8108949 Publication Model: Print-Electronic Cited Medium: Internet ISSN: 1098-2345 (Electronic) Linking ISSN: 02752565 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Am J Primatol Subsets: MEDLINE

Publication: New York : Wiley-Blackwell
Original Publication: New York : Liss, c1981-

Hylobates* ; Hominidae*; Animals ; Primates ; Pan paniscus ; Macaca fascicularis ; Pongo pygmaeus ; Diet/veterinary

Molar and incisor microwear reflect aspects of food choice and ingestive behaviors in living primates and have both been used to infer the same for fossil samples. Canine microwear, however, has received less attention, perhaps because of the prominent role canines play in social display and because they are used as weapons-while outside of a few specialized cases, their involvement in diet related behaviors has not been obvious. Here, we posit that microwear can also provide glimpses into canine tooth use in ingestion. Canines of Sumatran long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), agile gibbons (Hylobates agilis), lar gibbons (Hylobates lar), Thomas' leaf monkeys (Presbytis thomasi), and orangutans (Pongo abelii), and two African great apes, bonobos (Pan paniscus) and common chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes schweinfurthii), were considered. The labial tips of maxillary canine replicas were scanned using a white-light confocal profiler, and both feature and texture analyses were used to characterize microwear surface patterning. The taxa exhibited significant differences in canine microwear. In some cases, these were consistent with variation in reported anterior tooth use such that, for example, the orangutans, known to use their front teeth extensively in ingestion, had the highest median number of microwear features on their canines, whereas the gibbons, reported to use their front teeth infrequently in food acquisition, had the lowest.
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Leakey Foundation

Keywords: anterior tooth use and wear; cercopithecoids; hominoids

Hylobates lar

Date Created: 20240214 Date Completed: 20240415 Latest Revision: 20240415

20240415

10.1002/ajp.23608

38353023