Max Fürbringer's hypothesis of nerve–muscle specificity postulates that the connection between a muscle and its nerve supply is immutable throughout the course of ontogeny and phylogeny. This hypothesis has proven to have great heuristic value in determining muscle homologies, but exceptions are also known in which nerve supply is not constant. In the mammalian facial musculature, for example, the larger groups of muscles usually have a constant nerve supply, while the finer divisions of the preauricular group of muscles have a changeable nerve supply. Several instances are cited where one ramus of the facial nerve seems to have invaded the field of another. Nerve supply thus represents an excellent and useful, but by no means infallible, guide to muscle homologies.
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