PRIMATE SKELETAL ALLOMETRY AND HOMINOID EVOLUTION

Evolution of morphological allometry.

Morphological allometry refers to patterns of covariance between body parts resulting from variation in body size. Whether measured during growth (ontogenetic allometry), among individuals at similar developmental stage (static allometry), or among populations or species (evolutionary allometry), allometric relationships are often tight and relatively invariant. Consequently, it has been sugges...

Periodic Explosive Expansion of Human Retroelements Associated with the Evolution of the Hominoid Primate

Five retroelement families, L1 and L2 (long interspersed nuclear element, LINE), Alu and MIR (short interspersed nuclear element, SINE), and LTR (long terminal repeat), comprise almost half of the human genome. This genome-wide analysis on the time-scaled expansion of retroelements sheds light on the chronologically synchronous amplification peaks of each retroelement family in variable heights...

Body size and intelligence in hominoid evolution

Great apes and humans are the largest-brained primates. Aside from a few extinct subfossil lemurs, they are also the largest in body mass. Body size is a key aspect of a species’ biology, a large organism having different energetic, ecological, and physical constraints than a small one. Brain size, in so far as it determines abilities to acquire, process, and act on information, is also a key a...

Sexual dimorphism and allometry in primate ossa coxae.

Five measurements were taken on the ossa coxae of 454 adult primates representing Ceboidea, Cercopithecoidea and Hominoidea. Sex differences in these variables and their relationships to overall body size and sexual dimorphism were tested by means of Student's T-test and regression analysis. The study attempts to clarify the nature of primate pelvic sexual dimorphism, including allometric effec...

Comparative Methods for Studying Primate Adaptation and Allometry