The eighth annual Northeastern Evolutionary Primatologists (NEEP) meeting

Abstract

The eighth annual Northeastern Evolutionary Primatologists (NEEP) meeting was hosted by The State University of New York at Buffalo (SUNY Buffalo) from November 4th to November 5th, 2022. Upholding NEEP's philosophy of supporting young scholars, most of the research presented came from undergraduate and graduate students, as well as early career scientists. To kick off the conference, Stephanie Poindexter (SUNY Buffalo) introduced this year's keynote speaker, Dr. Kate McGrath (SUNY Oneonta). McGrath's talk, “What can teeth and bones tell us about stress? 3D studies of our fossil ancestors and primate relatives” was centered around McGrath's dissertation work and her current research on how stress events can be detected within teeth (and other hard tissues). The first half of her talk focused on how early stress events can affect canines, but more importantly how the presence of a linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH) can be indicative of a wide variety of stressors such as infections, malnutrition, weaning, psychosocial stress, and so on. To better understand this issue within primates, McGrath investigated LEHs in mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei). Her results revealed that when compared to the other great apes (chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans) mountain gorillas not only exhibit faster growth rates in their teeth, but also exhibit shallower LEH defects and angles in enamel. McGrath argued that these findings suggest that enamel growth variation influences enamel defect depth, but stress severity may better explain outliers. McGrath further proposed that this may be evidence to support the idea that Neanderthal teeth grew faster than modern anatomical humans because Neanderthal teeth exhibit shallower defects and angles. The second part of McGrath's talk focused on facial asymmetry and if it is a good indicator of early life stress. To better understand this potential correlation, McGrath yet again used mountain gorillas as her research species. She proposed that facial asymmetry seems to be heavily influenced by inbreeding and less so diet‐related effects, highlighting that all gorilla subspecies have become more asymmetrical over time. Moving forward, McGrath is interested in testing these theories in other fossil ancestors and hopes to collaborate with geneticists to further our understanding of the relationship between bone and early‐life stress events. 2 | PODIUM SESSIONS