The frugivorous insectivores? Functional morphological analysis of molar topography for inferring diet in extant treeshrews (Scandentia)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The ecology, and particularly the diet, of treeshrews (order Scandentia) is poorly understood compared to that of their close relatives, the primates. This stems partially from treeshrews having fast food transit times through the gut, meaning fecal and stomach samples only represent a small portion of the foodstuffs consumed in a given day. Moreover, treeshrews are difficult to observe in the wild, leading to a lack of observational data in the literature. Although treeshrews are mixed feeders, consuming both insects and fruit, it is currently unknown how the relative importance of these food types varies across Scandentia. Previous study of functional dental morphology has provided an alternative means for understanding the diet of living euarchontans. We used dental topographic metrics to quantify aspects of functional dental morphology in a large sample of treeshrews (n = 58). We measured relief index, Dirichlet normal energy, and three-dimensional orientation patch count rotated, which quantify crown relief, occlusal curvature, and complexity, respectively. Our results suggest that treeshrews exhibit dental morphology consistent with high levels of insectivory relative to other euarchontans. They also suggest that taxa such as Dendrogale melanura and Tupaia belangeri appear to be best suited to insectivory, whereas taxa such as T. palawanensis and T. gracilis appear to be best adapted to frugivory. Our results suggest that Ptilocercus lowii is characterized by a dentition better adapted to insectivory than the early primate Purgatorius. If P. lowii represents a good modern analogue for primitive euarchontans, this contrast would support models of primate origins that include a shift to greater frugivory.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".