A morfometria geométrica aplicada à cinemática do movimento

Abstract

The locomotion of an animal can be motivated by different factors. The ability to move gives each individual chances to express a direct response to these, being a characteristic closely linked to ecological and evolutionary processes. Traditionally, locomotor studies are based on filming and construction of locomotion diagrams using different numbers of variables that do not consider joint chain deformations. The objective of this work was to analyze and test the efficiency of using the geometric morphometry technique during studies of differentiation of locomotor patterns, using landmarks, homologous anatomical landmarks. For this, footage of 4 species of rodent mammals (Cavidae, Ctenomidae, Dasyproctidae) and one more species of Artiodactyla (Tragulidae), obtained at the Laboratory of Vertebrate Zoology – Tetrapoda at UERJ, with their locomotor patterns determined by traditional methodology, were adapted. to meet the standards required by the MG geometric morphometry technique. The study used the moments of maximum flexion and extension of the reference limb during recognizably different locomotor patterns, and thus generated an image bank in the TPSUtil program. From this image bank, the TPSDig2 program was used to score the landmarks in the joints of the limbs. Afterwards, the following analyzes were carried out in the MorphoJ program: Procrustean Analysis, Principal Components Analysis (PCA), Discriminant Function Analysis (DFA) and Canonical Variables Analysis (CVA). The research results indicate that when different locomotor patterns are analyzed in the same individual, there is a spatial separation in the resulting graphs and also in the ways in which the joint chains vary. Furthermore, when analyzing different species on a single locomotor pattern, the technique demonstrated a spatial separation between the species studied in the graphs. Thus, the MG technique appears as an additional form of studies on locomotion in animals.