ReviewPhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2023
Teeth and the gastrointestinal tract in mammals: when 1 + 1 = 3.
Review in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 13 citations in OpenAlex.
- A perspective from the Mesozoic: Evolutionary changes of the mammalian skull and their influence on feeding efficiency and high-frequency hearing.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2026Review
- Article
- You Should Look a Gift Ungulate in the Mouth: Using 2D Occlusal Cheek Tooth Morphology to Study the Evolution of Molarization in Ungulates.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Article
- Sodium Retention in Large Herbivores: Physiological Insights and Zoogeochemical Consequences.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2025Article
- Lateral jaw motion in fish expands the functional repertoire of vertebrates and underpins the success of a dominant herbivore lineage.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Using salamanders as model taxa to understand vertebrate feeding constraints during the late Devonian water-to-land transition.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Review
- Introduction: food processing and nutritional assimilation in animals.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Do salamanders chew? An X-ray reconstruction of moving morphology analysis of ambystomatid intraoral feeding behaviours.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Both teeth and the digestive tract show adaptations that are commonly interpreted in the context of trophic guilds-faunivory, herbivory and omnivory. Teeth prepare food for the digestive tract, and dental evolution focuses on increasing durability and functionality; in particular, size reduction of plant particles is an important preparation for microbial fermentative digestion. In narratives of digestive adaptations, microbes are typically considered as service providers, facilitating digestion. That the majority of 'herbivorous' (and possibly 'omnivorous') mammals display adaptations to maximize microbes' use as prey-by harvesting the microbes multiplying in their guts-is less emphasized and not reflected in trophic labels. Harvesting of microbes occurs either via coprophagy after separation from indigestible material by a separation mechanism in the hindgut, or from a forestomach by a 'washing mechanism' that selectively removes fines, including microbes, to the lower digestive tract. The evolution of this washing mechanism as part of the microbe farming niche opened the opportunity for the evolution of another mechanism that links teeth and guts in an innovative way-the sorting and cleaning of not-yet-sufficiently-size-reduced food that is then re-submitted to repeated mastication (rumination), leading to unprecedented chewing and digestive efficiency. This article is part of the theme issue 'Food processing and nutritional assimilation in animals'.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.