Scholars@Duke
Christine Elizabeth Wall

Christine Elizabeth Wall

Research Professor Emerita of Evolutionary Anthropology
Evolutionary Anthropology
christine.wall@duke.edu
Duke Box 90383, Durham, NC 27708-0383
Room 202 Biological Sciences Building, Durham, NC 27708

Scholarly Works - Journal articles

In memoriam: William Lee Jungers, Jr.

Journal article Journal of human evolution · February 2024 Full text Cite

Energetic costs of feeding in 12 species of small-bodied primates.

Journal article Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · December 2023 There are no comparative, empirical studies of the energetic costs of feeding in mammals. As a result, we lack physiological data to better understand the selection pressures on the mammalian feeding apparatus and the influence of variables such as food ge ... Full text Cite

Evolutionary History of food Withdraw Movements in Primates: Food Withdraw is Mediated by Nonvisual Strategies in 22 Species of Strepsirrhines

Journal article Evolutionary Biology · June 1, 2023 Anthropoid vision contributes not only to reaching and grasping but also to the orienting of a food item during the withdraw movement to precisely place it in the mouth for eating. The evolutionary history of this visual control of feeding is not known. It ... Full text Cite

A review of nose picking in primates with new evidence of its occurrence in Daubentonia madagascariensis

Journal article Journal of Zoology · February 1, 2023 Nose picking (rhinotillexis) is a common behaviour in humans which remains, however, poorly studied. Several species of primates are known to pick their nose and ingest the nasal mucus suggesting that this behaviour may actually be beneficial and showing i ... Full text Cite

Gaze-behaviors of runners in a natural, urban running environment.

Journal article PloS one · January 2020 Featured Publication Gaze-tracking techniques have advanced our understanding of visual attention and decision making during walking and athletic events, but little is known about how vision influences behavior during running over common, natural obstacles. This study tested h ... Full text Cite

Food mobility and the evolution of grasping behaviour: a case study in strepsirrhine primates.

Journal article The Journal of experimental biology · October 2019 Manual grasping is widespread among tetrapods but is more prominent and dexterous in primates. Whether the selective pressures that drove the evolution of dexterous hand grasping involved the collection of fruit or predation on mobile insects remains an ar ... Full text Cite

Food properties influence grasping strategies in strepsirrhines

Journal article Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · June 21, 2019 Although hand grasping is ubiquitous in primate species, its origins remain uncertain. This is in part because uncertainty about hand skills and grasping strategies persists in strepsirrhines, a monophyletic group of primates located near the base of the p ... Full text Cite

Does the shape of forelimb long bones co-vary with grasping behaviour in strepsirrhine primates?

Journal article Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · June 21, 2019 Fine prehensile activities are often thought to have been associated with the evolution of the human hand. However, there has been no holistic approach establishing the link between the morphology of the forelimb and grasping ability in living primates. Th ... Full text Cite

Inter-stride variability triggers gait transitions in mammals and birds.

Journal article Proceedings. Biological sciences · December 2018 Speed-related gait transitions occur in many animals, but it remains unclear what factors trigger gait changes. While the most widely accepted function of gait transitions is that they reduce locomotor costs, there is no obvious metabolic trigger signallin ... Full text Cite

Proteomics and immunohistochemistry identify the expression of α-cardiac myosin heavy chain in the jaw-closing muscles of sooty mangabeys (order Primates).

Journal article Arch Oral Biol · July 2018 OBJECTIVE: The jaw-closing muscles of humans and nonprimate mammals express alpha-cardiac fibers but MyHC α-cardiac has not been identified in the jaw adductors of nonhuman primates. We determined whether MyHC α-cardiac is expressed in the superficial mass ... Full text Link to item Cite

A method for discrimination of noise and EMG signal regions recorded during rhythmic behaviors.

Journal article Journal of biomechanics · December 2016 Analyses of muscular activity during rhythmic behaviors provide critical data for biomechanical studies. Electrical potentials measured from muscles using electromyography (EMG) require discrimination of noise regions as the first step in analysis. An expe ... Full text Cite

Holding-on: co-evolution between infant carrying and grasping behaviour in strepsirrhines.

Journal article Scientific reports · November 2016 The origin and evolution of manual grasping remain poorly understood. The ability to cling requires important grasping abilities and is essential to survive in species where the young are carried in the fur. A previous study has suggested that this behavio ... Full text Cite

Do functional demands associated with locomotor habitat, diet, and activity pattern drive skull shape evolution in musteloid carnivorans?

Journal article Biological Journal of the Linnean Society · April 1, 2016 A major goal of evolutionary studies is to better understand how complex morphologies are related to the different functions and behaviours in which they are involved. For example, during locomotion and hunting behaviour, the head and the eyes have to stay ... Full text Cite

Muscle Logic: New Knowledge Resource for Anatomy Enables Comprehensive Searches of the Literature on the Feeding Muscles of Mammals.

Journal article PloS one · January 2016 BackgroundIn recent years large bibliographic databases have made much of the published literature of biology available for searches. However, the capabilities of the search engines integrated into these databases for text-based bibliographic sear ... Full text Open Access Cite

Epaxial muscle fiber architecture favors enhanced excursion and power in the leaper Galago senegalensis.

Journal article J Anat · October 2015 Galago senegalensis is a habitual arboreal leaper that engages in rapid spinal extension during push-off. Large muscle excursions and high contraction velocities are important components of leaping, and experimental studies indicate that during leaping by ... Full text Link to item Cite

Finding our way through phenotypes.

Journal article PLoS biology · January 2015 Despite a large and multifaceted effort to understand the vast landscape of phenotypic data, their current form inhibits productive data analysis. The lack of a community-wide, consensus-based, human- and machine-interpretable language for describing pheno ... Full text Open Access Cite

Genetic comparisons yield insight into the evolution of enamel thickness during human evolution.

Journal article Journal of human evolution · August 2014 Enamel thickness varies substantially among extant hominoids and is a key trait with significance for interpreting dietary adaptation, life history trajectory, and phylogenetic relationships. There is a strong link in humans between enamel formation and mu ... Full text Cite

Regional variation in IIM myosin heavy chain expression in the temporalis muscle of female and male baboons (Papio anubis).

Journal article Archives of oral biology · April 2013 ObjectiveThe purpose of this study was to determine whether high amounts of fast/type II myosin heavy chain (MyHC) in the superficial as compared to the deep temporalis muscle of adult female and male baboons (Papio anubis) correlates with publish ... Full text Cite

Sex-related shape dimorphism in the human radiocarpal and midcarpal joints.

Journal article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · January 2013 Previous research has revealed significant size differences between human male and female carpal bones but it is unknown if there are significant shape differences as well. This study investigated sex-related shape variation and allometric patterns in five ... Full text Cite

Overview of FEED, the feeding experiments end-user database.

Journal article Integrative and comparative biology · August 2011 The Feeding Experiments End-user Database (FEED) is a research tool developed by the Mammalian Feeding Working Group at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center that permits synthetic, evolutionary analyses of the physiology of mammalian feeding. The tas ... Full text Open Access Cite

Functional and evolutionary significance of the recruitment and firing patterns of the jaw adductors during chewing in Verreaux's sifaka (Propithecus verreauxi).

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · August 2011 Jaw-muscle electromyographic (EMG) patterns indicate that compared with thick-tailed galagos and ring-tailed lemurs, anthropoids recruit more relative EMG from their balancing-side deep masseter, and that this muscle peaks late in the power stroke. These r ... Full text Cite

A preliminary analysis of correlated evolution in Mammalian chewing motor patterns.

Journal article Integrative and comparative biology · August 2011 Descriptive and quantitative analyses of electromyograms (EMG) from the jaw adductors during feeding in mammals have demonstrated both similarities and differences among species in chewing motor patterns. These observations have led to a number of hypothes ... Full text Cite

A preliminary analysis of correlations between chewing motor patterns and mandibular morphology across mammals.

Journal article Integrative and comparative biology · August 2011 The establishment of a publicly-accessible repository of physiological data on feeding in mammals, the Feeding Experiments End-user Database (FEED), along with improvements in reconstruction of mammalian phylogeny, significantly improves our ability to add ... Full text Cite

Genomic signatures of diet-related shifts during human origins.

Journal article Proceedings. Biological sciences · April 2011 There are numerous anthropological analyses concerning the importance of diet during human evolution. Diet is thought to have had a profound influence on the human phenotype, and dietary differences have been hypothesized to contribute to the dramatic morp ... Full text Cite

The jaw adductors of strepsirrhines in relation to body size, diet, and ingested food size.

Journal article Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · April 2011 Body size and food properties account for much of the variation in the hard tissue morphology of the masticatory system whereas their influence on the soft tissue anatomy remains relatively understudied. Data on jaw adductor fiber architecture and experime ... Full text Cite

Patterns of jaw-muscle recruitment evolution in mammals

Journal article Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2011 Cite

Patterns of functional integration in the mammalian masticatory apparatus

Journal article Integrative and Comparative Biology · 2011 Cite

A potential role for glucose transporters in the evolution of human brain size.

Journal article Brain, behavior and evolution · January 2011 Differences in cognitive abilities and the relatively large brain are among the most striking differences between humans and their closest primate relatives. The energy trade-off hypothesis predicts that a major shift in energy allocation among tissues occ ... Full text Cite

Sociality, Ecology, and Relative Brain Size in Lemurs.

Journal article Journal of Human Evolution · 2010 Cite

Mandibular corpus bone strain in goats and alpacas: implications for understanding the biomechanics of mandibular form in selenodont artiodactyls.

Journal article Journal of anatomy · January 2009 The goal of this study is to clarify the functional and biomechanical relationship between jaw morphology and in vivo masticatory loading in selenodont artiodactyls. We compare in vivo strains from the mandibular corpus of goats and alpacas to predicted st ... Full text Cite

Patterns of variation across primates in jaw-muscle electromyography during mastication.

Journal article Integrative and comparative biology · August 2008 Biologists that study mammals continue to discuss the evolution of and functional variation in jaw-muscle activity during chewing. A major barrier to addressing these issues is collecting sufficient in vivo data to adequately capture neuromuscular variatio ... Full text Cite

Jaw-muscle function and the origin of primates

Journal article · December 1, 2007 Anthropologists studying primate chewing have focused on the origins and evolution of the masticatory apparatus of anthropoids and humans. We know far less about the functional morphology and evolution of the masticatory apparatus in the earliest euprimate ... Full text Cite

Masticatory motor patterns in ungulates: a quantitative assessment of jaw-muscle coordination in goats, alpacas and horses.

Journal article Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological genetics and physiology · April 2007 We investigated patterns of jaw-muscle coordination during rhythmic mastication in three species of ungulates displaying the marked transverse jaw movements typical of many large mammalian herbivores. In order to quantify consistent motor patterns during c ... Full text Cite

Masseter electromyography during chewing in ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta).

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2006 We examined masseter recruitment and firing patterns during chewing in four adult ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta), using electromyography (EMG). During chewing of tougher foods, the working-side superficial masseter tends to show, on average, 1.7 times mo ... Full text Cite

Phase II jaw movements and masseter muscle activity during chewing in Papio anubis.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · February 2006 It was proposed that the power stroke in primates has two distinct periods of occlusal contact, each with a characteristic motion of the mandibular molars relative to the maxillary molars. The two movements are called phase I and phase II, and they occur s ... Full text Cite

Temporalis function in anthropoids and strepsirrhines: an EMG study.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · September 2005 The major purpose of this study is to analyze anterior and posterior temporalis muscle force recruitment and firing patterns in various anthropoid and strepsirrhine primates. There are two specific goals for this project. First, we test the hypothesis that ... Full text Cite

Jaw-muscle electromyography during chewing in Belanger's treeshrews (Tupaia belangeri).

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · May 2005 We examined masseter and temporalis recruitment and firing patterns during chewing in five male Belanger's treeshrews (Tupaia belangeri), using electromyography (EMG). During chewing, the working-side masseters tend to show almost three times more scaled E ... Full text Cite

Comparative functional analysis of skull morphology of tree-gouging primates.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · February 2003 Many primates habitually feed on tree exudates such as gums and saps. Among these exudate feeders, Cebuella pygmaea, Callithrix spp., Phaner furcifer, and most likely Euoticus elegantulus elicit exudate flow by biting into trees with their anterior dentiti ... Full text Cite

A biomechanical analysis of skull form in gum-harvesting galagids.

Journal article Folia primatologica; international journal of primatology · July 2002 Among primates, some highly gummivorous species habitually gouge trees to elicit exudate flow whereas others scrape the hardened gums from trees. These foraging behaviors are thought to require high external forces at the anterior dentition. In this study, ... Full text Cite

Symphyseal fusion and jaw-adductor muscle force: an EMG study.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · August 2000 The purpose of this study is to test various hypotheses about balancing-side jaw muscle recruitment patterns during mastication, with a major focus on testing the hypothesis that symphyseal fusion in anthropoids is due mainly to vertically- and/or transver ... Cite

A model of temporomandibular joint function in anthropoid primates based on condylar movements during mastication.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · May 1999 The hypothesis that the shape of the bony temporomandibular joint (TMJ) is functionally related to sagittal sliding of the condyle during mastication is tested, and a model of the relation of sagittal sliding to mandibular size, TMJ shape, and diet is deve ... Full text Cite

The expanded mandibular condyle of the Megaladapidae.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · June 1997 The Megaladapidae have a posterior expansion of the articular surface of the mandibular condyle. Several other strepsirhine species exhibit a similar condylar surface. In this study, I propose two behavioral scenarios in which the posterior articular expan ... Full text Cite

Shape, relative size, and size‐adjustments in morphometrics

Journal article American Journal of Physical Anthropology · January 1, 1995 Many problems in comparative biology and biological anthropology require meaningful definitions of “relative size” and “shape.” Here we review the distinguishing features of ratios and residuals and their relationships to other methods of “size‐adjustment” ... Full text Cite

EMG of the digastric muscle in gibbon and orangutan: functional consequences of the loss of the anterior digastric in orangutans.

Journal article American journal of physical anthropology · August 1994 Unlike all other primates, the digastric muscle of the orangutan lacks an anterior belly; the posterior belly, while present, inserts directly onto the mandible. To understand the functional consequences of this morphologic novelty, the EMG activity patter ... Full text Cite

Cretaceous mammal from Madagascar

Journal article Nature · 1994 Cite

A biomechanical analysis of the masticatory apparatus of Ptilodus (Multituberculata)

Journal article Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology · June 10, 1992 This study investigates the biomechanics of dental function in Ptilodus (Multituberculata) through vector analysis of masticatory muscles and comparisons of mechanically relevant cranial and dental dimensions to extant functional analogues. To isolate func ... Full text Cite