Dental News - GPS technology to map bat teeth

Lisa Townshend

Wed. 2 March 2011

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Biologists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have “mapped” the topography of bat teeth. The clever use of GPS technology has been designed in order to better understand how toothy ridges, peaks and valleys have evolved to allow different species to eat everything from hard-shelled insects to blood and nectar.

Using a method based on geographic positioning systems, the researchers could characterise the topography of the bats’ molars in a way similar to how geographers characterise mountain surfaces. The researchers calculated a measure of dental complexity that reflects how “rugged” the surface of the tooth is and were able to illustrate a trend from relative simplicity of the shearing molars in insect eaters and omnivores to high complexity of the crushing molars in fruit eaters.

Working with field-collected bat skulls, Researchers Sharlene Santana and Betsy Dumont of UMass Amherst, with Suzanne Strait of Marshall University, W. Va., compared the structure of molars across 17 species of the New World leaf-nosed bats that specialise in a variety of different diets (insects, fruits, and a combination).

They found that the molars of fruit-eating species had sharp outer edges that likely allow them to pierce tough fruit skin and pulp. By contrast, the molars of insect-eating species were less complex, possibly because of their smoother shearing surfaces. The study is published in the Feb. 16 online issue of the journal Functional Ecology.

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