0000000000140882
AUTHOR
Julia C. Boughner
showing 3 related works from this author
Anatomical Network Comparison of Human Upper and Lower, Newborn and Adult, and Normal and Abnormal Limbs, with Notes on Development, Pathology and Li…
2015
How do the various anatomical parts (modules) of the animal body evolve into very different integrated forms (integration) yet still function properly without decreasing the individual’s survival? This long-standing question remains unanswered for multiple reasons, including lack of consensus about conceptual definitions and approaches, as well as a reasonable bias toward the study of hard tissues over soft tissues. A major difficulty concerns the non-trivial technical hurdles of addressing this problem, specifically the lack of quantitative tools to quantify and compare variation across multiple disparate anatomical parts and tissue types. In this paper we apply for the first time a powerf…
Anatomical networks reveal the musculoskeletal modularity of the human head
2015
AbstractMosaic evolution is a key mechanism that promotes robustness and evolvability in living beings. For the human head, to have a modular organization would imply that each phenotypic module could grow and function semi-independently. Delimiting the boundaries of head modules and even assessing their existence, is essential to understand human evolution. Here we provide the first study of the human head using anatomical network analysis (AnNA), offering the most complete overview of the modularity of the head to date. Our analysis integrates the many biological dependences that tie hard and soft tissues together, arising as a consequence of development, growth, stresses and loads and mo…
Anatomical Network Analysis Shows Decoupling of Modular Lability and Complexity in the Evolution of the Primate Skull
2015
Modularity and complexity go hand in hand in the evolution of the skull of primates. Because analyses of these two parameters often use different approaches, we do not know yet how modularity evolves within, or as a consequence of, an also-evolving complex organization. Here we use a novel network theory-based approach (Anatomical Network Analysis) to assess how the organization of skull bones constrains the co-evolution of modularity and complexity among primates. We used the pattern of bone contacts modeled as networks to identify connectivity modules and quantify morphological complexity. We analyzed whether modularity and complexity evolved coordinately in the skull of primates. Specifi…