%0 Journal Article
%T Morphometrics investigation of the skulls, mandibles and molar in Tupaia belangeri from Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi<br>中缅树鼩头骨及下臼齿几何形态与环境的关系
%A ZHU Wanlong
%A JIA Ting
%A HUANG Chunmei
%A WANG Zhengkun
%A <br>朱万龙
%A 贾婷
%A 黄春梅
%A 王政昆
%J 生态学报
%D 2013
%I 
%X Tree shrews, native in south-east Asia, are diurnal mammals that share morphological features with insectivores and primates. This led to the assumption that tree shrews derived from a basal stock of Mesozoic insectivore Eutheria close to the origin of primates. Nowdays tree shrews are positioned as a separate order Scandentia with the extant species integrated into the families Tupaiidae and Ptilocercidae. Tupaia belangeri belongs to Scandebtia, Tupaiidae. They are small mammals of Palaearctic realm and Primarily inhabit in Southern China, India, and Southeast Asia. T. belangeri had the widest of distribution and occupies the highest of latitude in their family; and they were always inhabited in terrestrial, arboreal, mountainous forest and shrub areas. The analysis of shape is a fundamental part of many biological researches. Along with the development of statitics, so it had the sophistication of the analysis of these types of data. In the 1980s, a fundamental change began in the nature of the data gathered and analyzed, which focused on the coordinates of landmarks and the geometric information about their relative positions. This new approach, called"geometric morphometrics", which had benefits that lead Rohlf and Marcus (1993) to proclaim a"revolution"in morphometrics. Morphological divergence among taxa was estimated quantitatively by analysing the outline of the mandible. This method treats the mandible shape globally and provides continuous data which can be used to compute of phenotypic distances. In the present study, the morphological characteristics of the skulls, mandibles and molars (lower second molar and lower third molar) of T. belangeri distributed in Yunna, Guizhou and Guangxi were measured by geometric morphometric techniques, principal components analysis, discriminate analysis, thin plate spline and multidimensional scaling analysis. Principal components analysis showed the morphological characteristics of the lateral cranium were more valuable to be considered as morphological index, this could be the result of sense organs including the nasal cavity, orbit and the ear vesicle of lateral cranium in T. belangeri. In addition, significant morphological differentiations were observed in both nose bone and molars by using thin plate spline analysis, which may reflect its adaptation to geographical differences in climate and environment, morphological changes of nasal cavity can alleviate the cold air from the outside to the lungs effectively, but also reflects the rate of water loss, and water loss was related to the environment temperature, so the different ambient temperature may result in changes of nasal cavity morphology in T. belangeri. In addition, the size of nasal cavity may also reflect humidity conditions of its habitat indirectly. Therefore, the dual role of the temperature and the humidity may lead to difference of nasal cavity in T. belangeri which were distributed in Yunna, Guizhou and Guangxi. With multidimensi
%K Tupaia belangeri
%K geometric morphometric techniques
%K skull
%K molar<br>中缅树鼩
%K 几何形态测量法
%K 头骨
%K 臼齿
%U http://www.alljournals.cn/get_abstract_url.aspx?pcid=90BA3D13E7F3BC869AC96FB3DA594E3FE34FBF7B8BC0E591&jid=FE163E5DB2274E5937319DE98913EC37&aid=F414F585DA9A5004E92F6381B55D6E2C&yid=FF7AA908D58E97FA&vid=27746BCEEE58E9DC&iid=B31275AF3241DB2D&sid=CA1A83B3B8D8D763&eid=1DB1D13154F28125&journal_id=1000-0933&journal_name=生态学报&referenced_num=0&reference_num=33