Methodological Advances in Studying Postnatal Locomotor Development

Abstract

We study piglet locomotion, attempting to falsify a difference that is due to birth weight category.This requires a methodological foundation on topics unfamiliar to most Biologists (Fourier Analysis, probabilistic models), which I introduce in dedicated chapters._Part I: Kinematic Analysis_+ I will introduce Fourier Methods with a practical guide and review its occurrence specifically in the field of locomotor biomechanics (Ch. 2).+ The power of Fourier tools is then unleashed onto a large cross-species study that covers most of the ungulate clade (Ch. 3, Mielke et al., 2019)._Part II: Probabilistic Modeling_+ Processing complex kinematic data, I will introduce the basics of probabilistic modeling (Ch. 4) in a "tiny textbook of statistics"...+ ... before turning around the conventional modeling strategy and applying it to piglets (Ch. 5, Mielke et al., 2023)._Part III: Dynamics_+ Kinematics are just half of locomotor research: the study of forces and moments is reviewed and summarized in another overview chapter (Ch. 6).+ To calculate joint moments, one needs to measure inertial properties, yet it turns out that these are not trivial to retrieve from x-ray tomographic images (Ch. 7).The thesis closes with a general discussion to round up and project the presented work to potential future applications (Ch. 8).