Flight of Mammals: From Terrestrial Limbs to Wings

ISBN-13: 9783319087559 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 303 str.

Aleksandra A. Panyutina; Leonid P. Korzun; Alexander N. Kuznetsov

Opis

This book offers a new explanation for the development of flight in mammals and offers detailed morphological descriptions of mammals with flapping flight. The skeletomuscular apparatus of the shoulder girdle and forelimbs of tree shrews, flying lemurs and bats is described in detail. Special attention is paid to the recognition of peculiar features of the skeleton and joints. For the basic locomotor patterns of flying lemurs and bats, the kinematic models of the shoulder girdle elements are developed. The most important locomotor postures of these animals are analyzed by means of statics. The key structural characters of the shoulder girdle and forelimbs of flying lemurs and bats, the formation of which provided transition of mammals from terrestrial locomotion to gliding and then, to flapping flight, are recognized. The concept is proposed that preadaptations preceding the acquisition of flapping flight could have come from widely sprawled forelimb posture while gliding from tree to tree and running up the thick trunks. It is shown that flying lemur is an adequate morphofunctional model for an ancestral stage of bats. The evolutionary ecomorphological scenario describing probable transformational stages of typical parasagittal limbs of chiropteran ancestors into wings is developed.

Spis treści

​Chapter 1: Forelimb Morphology of Tree Shrews.- Chapter 2: Forelimb Morphology of Colugos.- Chapter 3: Forelimb Morphology of Bats.- Chapter 4: Functional Analysis of the Locomotor Apparatus of Colugos.- Chapter 5: Functional Analysis of the Locomotor Apparatus of Bats.- Chapter 6: Comparative Morphofunctional Analysis.- Chapter 7: Evolutionary Scenario for the Establishment of Flapping Flight.

O autorze

Dr. Alexandra A. Panyutina serves in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at Russia's Moscow State University. She has studied the evolution of bat flight since 2005. Prior to that, she studied the morpho ecological diversity of rhinolophid bats.

Dr. Leonid P. Korzun serves as Professor and Head of the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at Moscow State. He has studied the morphological evolution of vertebrates (mainly birds) by means of functional analysis since 1970.

Dr. Alexander N. Kuznetsov also serves in the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at Russia's Moscow State University. He has studied vertebrate locomotion since 1985, when he published the original model of the three-segment Z-like structure of mammalian parasagittal limb, which is now generally accepted by the scientific community.

Blurb

The evolutionary acquisition of flapping flight in mammals remains one of the unresolved questions of biology. Currently, no consensus as to the morphofunctional steps through which mammals passed to gain the ability to fly by flapping wings has been reached.
 
Flight of Mammals: From Terrestrial Limbs to Wings is the result of several years of research aimed to fill this gap in the literature. Its conclusions are based on original data obtained by dissections of musculoskeletal system of a number of species and on a biomechanical analysis of these data. In addition to a thorough discussion of anatomy and the means through which mammals acquired flapping flight, more than two-hundred detailed line drawings and images provide a picture of the mechanisms of flight in bats and colugos unavailable in any other source.
 
The book is of interest to a wide range of biologists, not only to those who study bats. The methods and approaches used by the authors can be also applied to other groups of mammals in order to create morphofunctional scenarios of their evolution.
 
Authors Aleksandra A. Panyutina, Leonid P. Korzun, and Alexander N. Kuznetsov are all followers of the scientific school of functional morphology developed at Department of Vertebrate Zoology, Faculty of Biology, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia.