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Relationships in red deerCervus elaphus mandibles

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Abstract

Growth in mammals often implies differences in body proportions and tissue development more or less characteristic for different age periods and ontogenetic stages. Mouth morphology is an important functional trait in herbivores, as it may determine both maximal intake rate and possibly level of selectivity. An untested hypothesis is that since individual bones within the skeleton are retarded in growth and development in proportion to their growth intensity at each time interval during periods of restricted nutritional supply, this may potentially affect ultimate skeletal proportions. We analysed data on mandible proportions (anterior:total) of 62 fetuses collected at different stages of growth and 16 776 red deerCervus elaphus Linnaeus, 1758 hinds from 0 to 26 years of age and 24026 males from 0 to 22 years of age harvested during autumns 1965–2001 along the west coast of Norway. At the fetal stage, the mandible proportion was negatively related to body weight and, therefore, declined with age of the fetus. The anterior part of the mandible was initially longer than the posterior part; the mandible proportion was between 0.75–0.8 at the fetal stage, but declined with increasing age. The relationship between mandible proportion and weight was strong for calves, but decreased with increasing age, and the relationship was almost flat when reaching 5 years of age. From 5 years, the anterior and posterior part of the mandible was approximately equal in length and this mandible proportion (0.50–0.51), which was unrelated to weight, remained stable for the rest of the life in both hinds and stags. After they were fully-grown, early conditions (cohort density and climate as measured by the North Atlantic Oscillation) had no measurable effect on ultimate mandible proportions after the effect of body weight was removed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University Center on Svalbard, N-9170, Longyearbyen, Norway

    Rolf Langvatn

  2. Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES), Department of Biology, University of Oslo, Blindern, P.O. Box 1050, N-0316, Oslo, Norway

    Atle Mysterud & Nils C. Stenseth

Authors
  1. Rolf Langvatn
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  2. Atle Mysterud
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  3. Nils C. Stenseth
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Correspondence to Atle Mysterud.

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Associate Editor was Krzysztof Schmidt.

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Langvatn, R., Mysterud, A. & Stenseth, N.C. Relationships in red deerCervus elaphus mandibles. Acta Theriol 49, 527–542 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192596

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03192596

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