Presenter: Mathew Beattie
Mentor: Samantha Hopkins
Poster: 3
Major: Biology/Geology
Diet of mammals affects the metabolic rate, intelligence, and many other physical and behavioral characteristics. Understanding how the diets of mammals affect the development, evolutionary history, and overall biomass of species can be instrumental in understanding the needs of endothermic mammals and the large energy costs that it takes to maintain their bodies. Most large mammalian herbivores fall into two main dietary categories: browsers (animals that feed on the leaves, twigs, and the fruits of trees and shrubs) and grazers (animals that eat grasses
and forbs). It takes more mass of grass or forb to sustain a mammal than it does leaves or twigs; therefore, grazers must eat more food than browsers and will therefore have more body mass as a result of their dietary preference. A species body form is directly related to the actions it needs to do to survive. Therefore, by analyzing the phylogenetic relationship between the diet of Artiodactyla or “hooved mammals” in the families Bovidae (cows, sheep, goats, and antelope) and Cervidae (deer, moose, and elk), and the average body mass of species in each category, we have found that there is a strong correlation between increased body mass and grazing. However, this effect is mediated by habitat; those taxa that graze also tend to inhabit more open habitats, where the increased predation pressure may also select for greater size. Therefore, we will be analyzing the effect of diet, body size, habitat, and eventually tooth morphology to understand the evolutionary history of Artiodactyla.