These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: New Perspectives on the Ontogeny and Evolution of Avian Locomotion.
    Author: Heers AM.
    Journal: Integr Comp Biol; 2016 Sep; 56(3):428-41. PubMed ID: 27371381.
    Abstract:
    Close correspondence between form and function is a central tenet of natural selection. One of the most striking, textbook cases for form-function congruence is the evolution of flight and the body plan of birds: compared with other tetrapods, extant adult birds have highly modified integuments and skeletons, and it has traditionally been assumed that many of these modifications are adaptations or exaptations for flight. However, developing birds that lack many of the morphological signatures of flight capacity nevertheless use their developing wings for a variety of flapping behaviors, such as wing-assisted incline running and even brief flight. Immature birds thereby demonstrate that rudimentary "flight" apparatuses are more functional than traditional assumptions about form-function relationships would predict. Here, I review the ontogeny of avian locomotion, highlighting how the developmental acquisition of flight in extant birds can improve our understanding of form-function relationships in the avian body plan, and provide insight into the evolutionary origin of flight among extinct non-avian theropod dinosaurs.
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]