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Project

The evolution of burrowing in limbless tetrapods.

This project focuses on the evolution of the locomotor system in burrowing limbless tetrapods.
These mysterious animals have received surprisingly little scientific attention since the beginning
of the 20th century. Although they have no legs, they occupy a wide range of different habitats
and show several locomotor modes. Despite the description of a new and unique mode of
locomotion in a burrowing caecilian in 1971, the locomotor system of limbless tetrapods has
received little attention. Consequently, a lot of questions remain to be answered about the
evolution of the movements and the forces used to burrow in limbless vertebrates. To answer
some of these questions, I will study the morphology (using μCT-scans, dissections, and geometric
morphometrics), the movements of the vertebral column and skin during burrowing under
different conditions (soil compactness) and the force generating capacity of representative
limbless tetrapods. By considering these data within a comparative framework, I will explore to
what degree functional and anatomical traits associated with burrowing are the result of
convergent evolution across the different limbless tetrapods clades. That information will finally
form the basis for defining structural and mechanical traits that are crucial for designing
prototypes to test additional hypotheses on adaptive evolution. In the future, the results of this
PhD project may be further explored to design bio-inspired robots with burrowing capacities.

Date:1 Oct 2018 →  30 Sep 2022
Keywords:tetrapods, anatomy, evolution, burrowing
Disciplines:Animal biology