A preliminary analysis of the relationship between jaw-muscle architecture and jaw-muscle electromyography during chewing across primates.

The architectural arrangement of the fibers within a muscle has a significant impact on how a muscle functions. Recent work on primate jaw-muscle architecture demonstrates significant associations with dietary variation and feeding behaviors. In this study, the relationship between masseter and temporalis muscle architecture and jaw-muscle activity patterns is explored using Belanger's treeshrews and 11 primate species, including two genera of strepsirrhines (Lemur and Otolemur) and five genera of anthropoids (Aotus, Callithrix, Cebus, Macaca, and Papio). Jaw-muscle weights, fiber lengths, and physiologic cross-sectional areas (PCSA) were quantified for this preliminary analysis or collected from the literature and compared to published electromyographic recordings from these muscles. Results indicate that masseter architecture is unrelated to the superficial masseter working-side/balancing-side (W/B) ratio across primate species. Alternatively, relative temporalis architecture is correlated with temporalis W/B ratios across primates. Specifically, relative temporalis PCSA is inversely related to the W/B ratio for the anterior temporalis, indicating that as animals recruit a larger relative percentage of their balancing-side temporalis, they possess the ability to generate relatively larger amounts of force from these muscles. These findings support three broader conclusions. First, masseter muscle architecture may have experienced divergent evolution across different primate clades related to novel functional roles in different groups. Second, the temporalis may be functionally constrained (relative to the masseter) across primates in its functional role of creating vertical occlusal forces during chewing. Finally, the contrasting results for the masseter and temporalis suggest that the fiber architecture of these muscles has evolved as distinct functional units in primates. (c) 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.