Masticatory Apparatus Performance and Functional Morphology in the Extremely Large Mice from Gough Island.

ABSTRACT: Since their arrival approximately 200 years ago, the house mice (Mus musculus) on Gough Island (GI) rapidly increased in size to become the largest wild house mice on record. Along with this extreme increase in body size, GI mice adopted a predatory diet, consuming significant quantities of seabird chicks and eggs. We studied this natural experiment to determine how evolution of extreme size and a novel diet impacted masticatory apparatus performance and functional morphology in these mice. We measured maximum bite force and jaw opening (i.e., gape) along with several musculoskeletal dimensions functionally linked to these performance measurements to test the hypotheses that GI mice evolved larger bite forces and jaw gapes as part of their extreme increase in size and/or novel diet. GI mic

SUBMITTER: Parmenter MD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6565519 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature