Scholars@Duke
Megan Anne Holmes

Megan Anne Holmes

Assistant Professor in Family Medicine and Community Health
Family Medicine and Community Health, Physician Assistant Program

Selected Publications

A (Bite) Force to Be Reckoned With.

Journal Article Am J Biol Anthropol · October 2025 OBJECTIVES: Bite force has received significant attention in biological anthropology, but maximum bite force estimates for a single primate species often span hundreds of newtons. In this synthesis, we discuss the definitions of maximum bite force, review ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ontogenetic Changes in Feeding Behaviors in Tufted Capuchins.

Journal Article Am J Biol Anthropol · August 2025 OBJECTIVES: Wild juvenile capuchins exhibit lower feeding success than adults, particularly for mechanically challenging foods, but ontogenetic changes in oral food processing behaviors related to this reduced success are unknown. We test how oral food pro ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Jaw-Muscle Structure and Function in Primates: Insights Into Muscle Performance and Feeding-System Behaviors.

Journal Article Evol Anthropol · March 2025 Featured Publication The jaw-adductor muscles drive the movements and forces associated with primate feeding behaviors such as biting and chewing as well as social signaling behaviors such as wide-mouth canine display. The past several decades have seen a rise in research aime ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Ontogenetic variation in palatal shape in tufted and untufted capuchins

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BIOLOGICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · 2025 Cite

Ontogenetic biomechanics of tufted (Sapajus) and untufted (Cebus) capuchin mandibles.

Journal Article Am J Biol Anthropol · October 2024 Featured Publication OBJECTIVES: Cortical bone geometry is commonly used to investigate biomechanical properties of primate mandibles. However, the ontogeny of these properties is less understood. Here we investigate changes in cortical bone cross-sectional properties througho ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ontogenetic changes in jaw leverage and skull shape in tufted and untufted capuchins.

Journal Article J Morphol · May 2024 Featured Publication The ontogeny of feeding is characterized by shifting functional demands concurrent with changes in craniofacial anatomy; relationships between these factors will look different in primates with disparate feeding behaviors during development. This study exa ... Full text Link to item Cite

Ontogenetic changes in bite force and gape in tufted capuchins.

Journal Article J Exp Biol · August 1, 2023 Bite force and gape are two important performance metrics of the feeding system, and these metrics are inversely related for a given muscle size because of fundamental constraints in sarcomere length-tension relationships. How these competing performance m ... Full text Link to item Cite

Increased Integration in Mutant Mice: An Analysis of the Patterns of Covariance through Ontogeny in Fgfr2 Mice

Conference FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · May 1, 2022 Mutations in the FGF/FGFR2 gene result in the premature fusion of fibrous and cartilaginous joints in the skull. This results in profound morphological changes in the skulls of both humans and mice with these mutations. Previous studies have indicated that ... Full text Cite

Cranial Dysmorphology in the Palatine, Vomer, and Pterygoid Plates of Fgfr2mice

Conference FASEB journal : official publication of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology · May 1, 2022 The fibroblast growth factor and receptor system (FGF/FGFR) regulates cell proliferation and differentiation for various tissue types in the body - including osseous tissue. Mutations in the FGFR2 gene are associated with craniosynostosis, leading to alter ... Full text Cite

The influence of jaw-muscle fibre-type phenotypes on estimating maximum muscle and bite forces in primates.

Journal Article Interface Focus · October 6, 2021 Featured Publication Numerous anthropological studies have been aimed at estimating jaw-adductor muscle forces, which, in turn, are used to estimate bite force. While primate jaw adductors show considerable intra- and intermuscular heterogeneity in fibre types, studies general ... Full text Link to item Cite

Fiber-type phenotype of the jaw-closing muscles in Gorilla gorilla, Pan troglodytes, and Pan paniscus: A test of the Frequent Recruitment Hypothesis.

Journal Article J Hum Evol · February 2021 Featured Publication Skeletal muscle fiber types are important determinants of the contractile properties of muscle fibers, such as fatigue resistance and shortening velocity. Yet little is known about how jaw-adductor fiber types correlate with feeding behavior in primates. C ... Full text Link to item Cite

The Source and the Course of the Articular Branches to the T4-T8 Zygapophysial Joints.

Journal Article Pain Med · December 1, 2019 Featured Publication OBJECTIVE: To define the source and the course of the articular branches to the midthoracic zygapophysial ("z") joints. DESIGN: Cadaveric dissection. SETTING: The Gross Anatomy Laboratory of the Duke University School of Medicine. SUBJECTS: Ten human cadav ... Full text Link to item Cite

Critical errors in infrequently performed trauma procedures after training.

Journal Article Surgery · November 2019 BACKGROUND: Critical errors increase postoperative morbidity and mortality. A trauma readiness index was used to evaluate critical errors in 4 trauma procedures. In comparison to practicing and expert surgeon benchmarks, we hypothesized that pretraining tr ... Full text Link to item Cite

Gorilla hindlimb muscle fiber phenotypes

Conference AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY · March 1, 2019 Link to item Cite

Cadaver-Based Trauma Procedural Skills Training: Skills Retention 30 Months after Training among Practicing Surgeons in Comparison to Experts or More Recently Trained Residents.

Journal Article J Am Coll Surg · August 2018 BACKGROUND: Long-term retention of trauma procedural core-competency skills and need for re-training after a 1-day cadaver-based course remains unknown. We measured and compared technical skills for trauma core competencies at mean 14 months (38 residents) ... Full text Link to item 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 Featured Publication 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

Jaw-Muscle Fiber Architecture and Leverage in the Hard-Object Feeding Sooty Mangabey are not Structured to Facilitate Relatively Large Bite Forces Compared to Other Papionins.

Journal Article Anat Rec (Hoboken) · February 2018 Featured Publication Numerous studies have sought to link craniofacial morphology with behavioral ecology in primates. Extant hard-object feeders have been of particular interest because of their potential to inform our understanding about the diets of early fossil hominins. S ... Full text Link to item Cite

Assessing surgical training: a utility analysis of the advanced surgical skills for exposure in trauma course

Journal Article Journal of the American College of Surgeons · October 2014 Featured Publication Full text Cite

Interpreting skeletal growth in the past from a functional and physiological perspective.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · January 2013 Featured Publication The study of juvenile skeletal remains can yield important insights into the health, behavior, and biological relationships of past populations. However, most studies of past skeletal growth have been limited to relatively simple metrics. Considering addit ... Full text Link to item Cite

Dietary effects on development of the human mandibular corpus.

Journal Article Am J Phys Anthropol · August 2011 Featured Publication The extent to which the mandibular corpus exhibits developmental plasticity has important implications for interpreting variation in adult and juvenile mandibular morphology in the archaeological and paleontological record. Here, we examine ontogenetic cha ... Full text Link to item Cite