Abstract

  Research on human dental science is relevant to health and life quality. This is somewhat obvious in medicine, but perhaps less obvious to researchers of this sector is that some dental traits can be used as practical indicators in ecology and evolutionary studies. The aim of this short note is to provide the reader with information on how some dental traits are used to support evolutionary hypotheses in mammalian species. The ideas presented in this note are further elaborated by the author in a recently published article in Ecological indicators journal [1].

  One of the characteristics of teeth of many mammalian species is that once they have emerged they have achieved their final size, and do not grow any further, neither are they repaired or replaced when the tooth is damaged. This means that (i) tooth wear accumulates across life, reducing the length of time the tooth works efficiently and so reducing the span of the animal´s life, and (ii) animals that spend more time chewing or chew food that is more abrasive will have faster rates of tooth wear compared to animals that spend less time chewing or that use less abrasive diets. Therefore, tooth wear is an interesting feature, as it can be used to track changes in mastication activity across an animal´s life, which helps to compare differences between individuals, sexes, populations or related species.

References

1. Pérez-Barbería FJ. “Tooth wear as a practical indicator of sexual differences in senescence and mastication investment in ecology studies”. Ecological Indicators 103 (2019): 735-744. 
2. Kirkwood TBL. “Evolution of ageing”. Nature 270 (1977): 301-304.
3. Pérez-Barbería FJ., et al. “The influence of habitat on body size and tooth wear in Scottish red deer (Cervus elaphus)”. Canadian Journal of Zoology 93 (2014):  61-70. 
4. Carranza J., et al. “Disposable-soma senescence mediated by sexual selection in an ungulate”. Nature 432 (2004):  215-218.
5. Carranza J and Pérez-Barbería FJ. “Sexual selection and senescence: Male size-dimorphic ungulates evolved relatively smaller molars than females”. American Naturalist 170 (2007): 370-380.
6. Pérez-Barbería FJ., et al. “Wear Fast, Die Young: More Worn Teeth and Shorter Lives in Iberian Compared to Scottish Red Deer”. Plos One 10 (2015): e0134788.
7. Veiberg, V., et al. “Evidence for a trade-off between early growth and tooth wear in Svalbard reindeer”. Journal of Animal Ecology 76 (2007): 1139-1148. 

Citation

Citation: Pérez-Barbería FJ. “Use of Tooth Traits in Evolutionary and Ecology Studies”.Acta Scientific Dental Sciences 4.3 (2020): 16-17.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2020 Pérez-Barbería FJ. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.