The relationship between primate distal fibula trabecular architecture and arboreality, phylogeny and size.

Abstract

The fibula, despite being traditionally overlooked compared to the femur and the tibia, has recently received attention in primate functional morphology due to its correlation with the degree of arboreality (DOA). Highlighting further fibular features that are associated with arboreal habits would be key to improving palaeobiological inferences in fossil specimens. Here we present the first investigation on the trabecular bone structure of the primate fibula, focusing on the distal epiphysis, across a vast array of species. We collected μCT data on the distal fibula for 21 species of primates, with representatives from most of the orders, and we employed a recently developed approach implemented in the R package 'indianaBones' to isolate the entire trabecular bone underlying an epiphysis or articular facet. After extracting both traditional trabecular parameters and novel topological indices, we tested for the posited relationship between trabecular bone and DOA. To disentangle this effect from others related to body size and phylogenetic relationship, we included a body mass proxy as covariate and employed phylogenetic comparative methods. We ran univariate/multivariate and exploratory/inferential statistical analyses. The trabecular structure of the fibular distal epiphysis in primates does not appear to be associated with the DOA. Instead, it is strongly affected by body mass and phylogenetic relationships. Although we identified some minor trends related to human bipedalism, our findings overall discourage, at this stage, the study of distal fibula trabecular bone to infer arboreal behaviors in extinct primates. We further found that body size distribution is strongly related to phylogeny, an issue preventing us from unravelling the influence of the two factors and that we believe can potentially affect future comparative analyses of primates. Overall, our results add to previous evidence of how trabecular traits show variable correlation with locomotor aspects, size and phylogenetic history across the primate skeleton, thus outlining a complex scenario in which a network of interconnected factors affects the morphological evolution of primates. This work may represent a starting point for future studies, for example, focusing on the effect of human bipedalism on distal fibula trabecular bone, or aiming to better understand the effects of body size and phylogenetic history on primate morphological evolution.