Presenter: Carly Pate
Co-Presenters: Andrea Eller and Ulirike Streicher
Mentors: Frances White and Lawrence Ulibarri, Anthropology
Poster: 50
Major: Anthropology and General Science
Evolutionary veterinary medicine is a burgeoning field, applying evolutionary perspectives to comparative and veterinary data. Because evolutionary research focuses on natural variation across species, veterinary medicine is
an obvious partner for understanding nonhuman anatomy. To meet this goal, cross-disciplinary work is required, but we need to be able to compare and exchange data. Utilizing the comparative collections in the University of Oregon Primate Osteology Lab, and in collaboration with both an evolutionary biologist and a wildlife veterinarian, we present a protocol that is designed for many vertebrate species and includes procedures for collecting normal and pathological variation. Published necropsies are surprising rare. Veterinary necropsies tend to be pathology- based, whereas anthropologists’ are focused on normal variation within and between species. The protocols cited and described in veterinary medicine tend to be particular to a single species and do not document repeatable procedures. Anthropological research tends to focus solely on the anatomical area of interest. We are developing a protocol using a uniform and explicit technique, so that the data can be analyzed and compared across disciplines. We pay particular attention to tissues that have evolutionary significance in their degree of variance like fat, skeletal muscle, brain weight, gastro-intestinal tract and bone. We include placental mammals, marsupials, and reptiles in our initial phase of data collection. This protocol will be utilized for ongoing comparative research.