Abstract
Comparative descriptions and drawings of the jaw apparatus of the genera Fratercula and Cerorhinca as compared to Uria have been made. During the evolution of puffins, the shape of the high and laterally compressed bill was affected by the necessity to squeeze items forcefully, which is primarily related to digging burrows (by biting the soil, which is usually dense turf), and to some extent, by sexual selection. Narrower jaws in the transverse plane exert a higher pressure during grasping and extrude a more limited water volume when the mouth is closed helping the birds to catch small crustaceans. The need to align obliquely the external adductor muscle has determined the major traits of the head in these birds, namely, a modified layout of the external adductor muscle with the prevalence of its medial portion, reduction of the postorbital part of the superficial portion, and the clinorhynchy of the skull. There is an abutment of the mandible against the cranial base, which prevents the mandible from retreating when the bird presses the bill into soil (turf) during digging. The morphology of the skull and jaw apparatus of the Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) is assumed to be fundamental for the genus. In the tufted puffin (F. cirrhata), maximal development of the aponeurotic framework in the jaw muscles is observed, as is a decreased range of cranial kinetics due to the complication of the pseudotemporalis profundus muscle, which increases its available force to the detriment of the contraction amplitude. The horn billed puffin (Cerorhinca monocerata) shows a secondarily despecialized state.
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Original Russian Text © A.A. Badikova, F.Ya. Dzerzhynsky, 2014, published in Zoologicheskii Zhurnal, 2014, Vol. 93, No. 10, pp. 1210–1221.
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Badikova, A.A., Dzerzhynsky, F.Y. Functional morphology and adaptive features of the jaw apparatus in puffins (Fraterculini, Alcidae, and Charadriiformes). Biol Bull Russ Acad Sci 42, 622–632 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1134/S106235901507002X
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1134/S106235901507002X