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Adaptive plasticity in the mouse mandible.

Philip S L Anderson1, Sabrina Renaud, Emily J Rayfield

  • 1School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. Philip.Anderson@duke.edu.

BMC Evolutionary Biology
|April 19, 2014
PubMed
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Plasticity allows mouse mandibles to adapt shape to diet. Hard food diets enhance jaw biomechanics for chewing, while soft food diets alter integration patterns, potentially influencing evolution.

Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Developmental biology
  • Biomechanics

Background:

  • Organisms exhibit plasticity, modifying morphology in response to environmental stimuli.
  • This non-heritable variation may aid survival and enable heritable adaptive traits.
  • The adaptive significance of plastic morphological changes, particularly in skeletal tissues, remains under investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate if plastic bone remodeling in mouse mandibles leads to functionally advantageous biomechanical consequences.
  • To assess the impact of diet consistency on mandibular shape and biomechanics.

Main Methods:

  • Geometric morphometrics were used to analyze mandibular shape in two groups of inbred mice.
  • Mice were fed either standard rodent pellets or a soft diet (pellets mixed with jelly).

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  • Mechanical advantage of jaw adductor musculature was measured.

    • Main Results:

    • Significant mandibular shape differences were observed between mice fed different diets, altering their biomechanical profiles.
    • Mice on a soft food diet exhibited reduced mechanical advantage compared to those on a hard food diet.
    • Soft food eaters showed decreased integration between jaw regions, particularly the molar and angular regions.

    Conclusions:

    • Bone remodeling in mouse mandibles significantly shifts biomechanical ability in response to food consistency.
    • Hard food diets result in mandibles better adapted for processing hard foods.
    • Soft food diets lead to less overall integration but a shift towards incisor-related regions, potentially influencing evolutionary trajectories.