Meeting Abstract

8.9  Saturday, Jan. 4 09:04  Simulating the Universe of Possible Functional Designs WESTNEAT, M.; Field Museum of Natural History mwestneat@fieldmuseum.org

Musculoskeletal systems are often arranged in ways that allow computational modeling of force, motion, work and power across systems and across species. Such modeling can aid in examining trade-offs between force and speed, making broad phylogenetic comparisons of function based on morphometric data, and studying the relationship between form and function across diverse evolutionary designs. Of great interest in this area is an ability to compare the range of living forms (and their functions) with the universe of all possible biomechanical configurations, in order to see what parts of morpho-mechanical space are not viable, which are occupied, and which perhaps could be occupied but are not. Computational simulation models are presented for simple musculoskeletal levers and linkage systems from vertebrate feeding systems, with comparisons to several large clades of vertebrates to explore what parts of theoretical morphomechanical space are occupied.