Back to Search
Start Over
Severe wear and tooth loss in wild ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta): a function of feeding ecology, dental structure, and individual life history.
- Source :
-
Journal of human evolution [J Hum Evol] 2006 Nov; Vol. 51 (5), pp. 490-505. Date of Electronic Publication: 2006 Jul 14. - Publication Year :
- 2006
-
Abstract
- The ring-tailed lemurs at Beza Mahafaly Special Reserve, Madagascar, exhibit a high frequency of severe wear and antemortem tooth loss. As part of a long-term study, we collected dental data on 83 living adult ring-tailed lemurs during 2003 and 2004. Among these individuals, 192 teeth were scored as absent. The most frequently missing tooth position is M1 (24%). As M1 is the first tooth to erupt, its high frequency of absence (primarily a result of wear) is not remarkable. However, the remaining pattern of tooth loss does not correlate with the sequence of eruption. We suggest that this pattern is a function of 1) feeding ecology, as hard, tough tamarind fruit is a key fallback food of ring-tailed lemurs living in gallery forests; 2) food processing, as tamarind fruit is primarily processed in the P3-M1 region of the mouth; and 3) tooth structure, as ring-tailed lemurs possess thin dental enamel. The incongruity between thin enamel and use of a hard, tough fallback food suggests that ring-tailed lemurs living in riverine gallery forests may rely on resources not used in the past. When comparing dental health in the same individuals (n=50) between 2003 and 2004, we found that individual tooth loss can show a rapid increase over the span of one year, increasing by as much as 20%. Despite this rapid loss, individuals are able to survive, sometimes benefiting from unintentional assistance from conspecifics, from which partially processed tamarind fruit is obtained. Although less frequent in this population, these longitudinal data also illustrate that ring-tailed lemurs lose teeth due to damage and disease, similar to other nonhuman primates. The relationship between tooth loss, feeding ecology, dental structure, and individual life history in this population has implications for interpreting behavior based on tooth loss in the hominid fossil record.
- Subjects :
- Age Factors
Animals
Animals, Wild
Demography
Dental Enamel anatomy & histology
Female
Health Status
Madagascar epidemiology
Male
Primate Diseases epidemiology
Tooth Abrasion epidemiology
Tooth Abrasion etiology
Tooth Loss epidemiology
Tooth Loss etiology
Behavior, Animal
Diet
Lemur
Primate Diseases etiology
Tooth Abrasion veterinary
Tooth Loss veterinary
Subjects
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 0047-2484
- Volume :
- 51
- Issue :
- 5
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Journal of human evolution
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 16962643
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhevol.2006.07.001