melody w young
climbing
Climbing has evolved independently in numerous limbed lineages and has allowed the occupation of arboreal niches. Extant taxa capable of climbing come in every flavor imaginable – spanning nearly 8 magnitudes in body size from mite to bear, they also differ in limb number and body plan. From sprawling geckos to upright humans, I am especially curious as to how these largely disparate taxa handle the locomotor demands of climbing through the lens of limb loading profiles, center of mass mechanics, and metabolic energetic consumption.
grasping
One of the long-standing differentiating characteristics of Order: Primates are their powerful grasping hands and feet. Their highly arboreal lifestyles requires frequently traversing complex, compliant, discontinuous 3D substrates, of which high grasping forces would surely be evolutionary favorable. Over the past two years, thanks to the research team at the Duke Lemur Center, we set out to test just how strong our early primate ancestors are and collected grasping forces for nearly 100 lemurs across 11 species.
novelty
Parrots are incredibly smart birds, well known for their behavioral flexibility and fluidity at adapting to entirely new environments. Over the past few years in the lab, we have become increasingly fascinated by the fluidity at which they use their beak-head-neck in tasks outside their intended role. From climbing up vertical substrates, to swinging beneath thin substrates (we dub beakiation), parrots readily co-opt their feeding system and neck musculature by integrating it into cyclic locomotor cycle. Employing "forbidden" tripedal gaits, parrots continue surprising us with their creativity and adaptability every day.
