Masticatory loading is one of the main environmental stimuli that generate craniofacial variation among recent humans. Experimental studies on a wide variety of mammals, including those with retrognathic postcanine teeth, predict that responses to masticatory loading will be greater in the occlusal plane, the inferior rostrum, and regions associated with the attachments of the temporalis and masseter muscles. Here we test these experimentally-derived predictions on an extinct human population from the middle and upper Ohio valley that underwent a marked shift from hunting-gathering to extensive farming during the last 3,000 years and for which we have good archaeological evidence about diet and food processing technology. Geometric morphometric methods were used to detect and measure the putative effect of diet changes on cranial shape independent of size. Our results partially confirm only some of the experimental predictions. The effect of softer and/or less tough diets on craniofacial shape seem to be concentrated in the relative reduction of the temporal fossa and in a displacement of the attachment of the temporal muscle. However, there were few differences in craniofacial shape in regions closer to the occlusal plane. These results highlight the utility of exploring specific localized morphological shifts using a hierarchical model of craniofacial integration.

Different scenarios attempting to describe the initial phases of the human dispersal from Asia into the New World have been proposed during the last two decades. However, some aspects concerning the population affinities among early and modern Asians and Native Americans remain controversial. Specifically, contradictory views based mainly on partial evidence such as skull morphology or molecular genetics have led to hypotheses such as the "Two Waves/Components" and "Single Wave" or "Out of Beringia" model, respectively. Alternatively, an integrative scenario considering both morphological and molecular variation has been proposed and named as the "Recurrent Gene Flow" hypothesis. This scenario considers a single origin for all the Native Americans, and local, within-continent evolution plus the persistence of contact among Circum-Arctic groups. Here we analyze 2D geometric morphometric data to evaluate the associations between observed craniometric distance matrix and different geographic design matrices reflecting distinct scenarios for the peopling of the New World using basic and partial Mantel tests. Additionally, we calculated the rate of morphological differentiation between Early and Late American samples under the different settlement scenarios and compared our findings to the predicted morphological differentiation under neutral conditions. Also, we incorporated in our analyses some variants of the classical Single Wave and Two Waves models as well as the Recurrent Gene Flow model. Our results suggest a better explanatory performance of the Recurrent Gene Flow model, and provide additional insights concerning affinities among Asian and Native American Circum-Arctic groups.

Fluctuating and directional asymmetry are aspects of morphological variation widely used to infer environmental and genetic factors affecting facial phenotypes. However, the genetic basis and environmental determinants of both asymmetry types is far from being completely known. The analysis of facial asymmetries in admixed individuais can be of help to characterize the impact of a genome's heterozygosity on the deveiopmental basis of both fl.uctuating and directional asymmetries. Here we characterize the association between genetic ancestry and individual asymmetry on a sample of Latin-American admixed populations. To do so, three-dimensional (3D) facial shape attributes were explored on a sample of 4,104 volunteers aged between 18 and 85 years. Individual ancestry and heterozygosity was estimated using more than 730,000 genome-wide markers. Multivariate techniques applied to geometric morphometric data were used to evaluate the magnitude and significance of directional and ftuctuating asymmetry (FA), as well as correiations and multipie regressions aimed to estimate the relationship between facial FA scores and heterozygosity and a set of covariates. Resuits indicate that directional and FA are both signi:ficant, the former being the strongest expression of asymmetry in this sample. In addition, our analyses suggest that there are some specific patterns of facial asymmetries characterizing the different ancestry groups. Finally, we find that more heterozygous individuais exhibit lower leveis of asymmetry. Our results highlight the importance of including ancestry-admixture estimators, especially when the analyses are aimed to compare leveis of asymmetries on groups differing on socioeconomic leveis, as a proxy to estimate developmental noise. Am J Phys Anthropol 000:000--000, 2015.

The expression of facial asymmetries has been recurrently related with poverty and/or disadvantaged socioeconomic status. Departing from the developmental instability theory, previous approaches attempted to test the statistical relationship between the stress experienced by individuals grown in poor conditions and an increase in facial and corporal asymmetry. Here we aim to further evaluate such hypothesis on a large sample of admixed Latin Americans individuals by exploring if low socioeconomic status individuals tend to exhibit greater facial fluctuating asymmetry values. To do so, we implement Procrustes analysis of variance and Hierarchical Linear Modelling (HLM) to estimate potential associations between facial fluctuating asymmetry values and socioeconomic status. We report significant relationships between facial fluctuating asymmetry values and age, sex, and genetic ancestry, while socioeconomic status failed to exhibit any strong statistical relationship with facial asymmetry. These results are persistent after the effect of heterozygosity (a proxy for genetic ancestry) is controlled in the model. Our results indicate that, at least on the studied sample, there is no relationship between socioeconomic stress (as intended as low socioeconomic status) and facial asymmetries.

This work investigates the therapeutic value of animals to rural farmers who live on the central plateau of Chubut, Argentina. Open and indepth interviews were carried out with 35 rural farmers from Sierra Rosada, Sierra Ventana, El Escorial and Telsen. A total of 16 biological species (12 wild and 4 domestic animals) were involved in treatment (34 registered up to the present) of different ailments, empacho being one of the main therapeutic targets. Of the domestic species, the hen (Gallus gallus domesticus) was the most versatile in its usefulness, and the choique (Darwin's Rhea) (Rhea pennata) was the most versatile wild animal. Farmers used 15 different parts of the animals, fat being the substance which was obtained from most species. These zootreatments imply the transfer of aptitudes (the acquisition of a certain attribute of a species through ingestion or contact with specific parts of the animal), which transforms the health and lives of the people. Our results shed light on the symbolic and symbiotic relationships woven into rural life, with their implications for the conservation and management of wild fauna.