How do animals walk, and how does environment influence evolution of the ways they move? Join Alexa Wednesday next week for an analysis across tetrapods and case studies in hoofed mammals.
Comment les animaux marchent-ils, et comment l’environnement influence-t-il l’évolution de leurs modes de déplacement ? Rejoignez Alexa mercredi prochain pour une analyse des tétrapodes et des études de cas sur les mammifères à sabots.
Virtual Seminar Wednesday December 14, 2022 – Conférence virtuelle mercredi le 14 decembre 2022
12:00 – 13:00 (Eastern Time)
Alexa Wimberly (University of Chicago)
Quadrupedal tetrapod walking gaits and the novelty of locomotor morphology in unguligrade mammals
“Démarches quadrupèdes des tétrapodes et nouveauté de la morphologie locomotrice chez les mammifères unguligrades”
Summary: Tetrapods move around in their environments in many ways. By studying movement in living animals, we can better understand evolutionary patterns in locomotion and ecology in fossil animals. This seminar will first investigate the diversity of quadrupedal tetrapod walking gaits in an evolutionary context by studying phase, or the sequence in which four-legged animals move their limbs. Alexa will also discuss how this walking gait project influenced the direction of her dissertation work: how ecological factors have influenced the locomotor evolution of hoofed mammals, particularly ruminant artiodactyls (Suborder Ruminantia; cattle, deer, gazelles, giraffes, etc.). The second part of the talk will look at the first part of Alexa’s dissertation, which predicts body mass from limb bone measurements in living ruminants. The seminar will end with a brief look at current and future projects.
This seminar is open to public.
Please register HERE to receive a link to the Zoom event.
You are welcome to share the flyer with family, friends or colleagues at other institutions and post the registration link on your social media.
Cette conférence est ouverte au public.
Veuillez vous inscrire ici pour recevoir un lien vers l’événement Zoom.
Vous êtes invités à partager le dépliant avec votre famille, vos amis ou vos collègues d’autres institutions et à publier le lien d’inscription sur vos médias sociaux.
About the speaker:
Alexa received her Bachelor of Arts in anthropology with an emphasis in biological anthropology at the University of Arkansas in 2016, where she studied dental microwear in capuchin monkeys. She began pursuing her PhD at the University of Chicago in 2018 as part of the Integrative Biology program with new interests in mammalian evolution, functional morphology, and locomotion. Since January of 2022, Alexa has been living in Washington, D.C. as part of a year-long predoctoral fellowship program at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, where she has been collecting data in living and extinct hoofed mammals for her research. In late December, she will move back to Chicago to continue her dissertation.