- Project title
- Microanatomical study of aquatic bird long bones
- Description of the project
- Among secondarily aquatic tetrapods, birds represent several unique features. Their morphology and locomotion types are very diverse: the best swimmers have lost their ability to fly, or sometimes their ability to walk on land. However certain species are both effective swimmers, fliers, and walkers. The skeletal system of aquatic birds had thus to become suitable for the effective locomotion in various media, which required trade-offs in their morpho-functional adaptations. The present study seeks to answer how did the inner structure of bird bones adapt to the various locomotion types and highly different physical constraints, and how similar are these solutions to other secondary aquatic vertebrates?
Works done by the platform AST-RX