TRIDENT

TRIDENT is an interdisciplinary project combining human and technic competences in agronomy (Mourier Farm Station), tribology (Institut Pprime) and paleontology (iPHEP). TRIDENT aims at investigating the ecology of herbivorous mammals through dietary behaviour analysis. For this, the project will develop dietary reconstruction models thanks to new technical advances of 3D Dental Microwear Texture Analysis (3D-DMTA) applied to a dataset resulting from an ambitious controlled-food testing on domestic sheep. The controlled-food testing will be conducted at the Mourier Farm Station over 6 months on 120 sheep fed on different known amounts of grasses, forbs and fruits. Sheep dental microwear data acquired through in vivo dentition molding will be analyzed in collaboration with the Institut Pprime with a newly acquired dual-core non-contact 3D surface profilometer, a key for performing state-of-the-art 3D dental tribology analyses. This will result in creating a large and unique dual-data set combining food composition and 3D Dental Microwear Textures for the tested sample. TRIDENT will use this data to explore for the very first time the effects of several parameters on dental microwear textures: exact food composition, food physicochemical properties, dental microwear turnover, and mode of samplings (randomly, biased) for simulating the seasonal mortality in the wild. Unprecedented understandings of the factors ruling microwear texture formation will emerge. From this, a set of models will be set for precisely characterize the feeding spectrum of a given species. TRIDENT will then use this tool to investigate the diversity and spatiotemporal variability of ecological niches through three case studies selected for the high quality of their available data and the congruence with iPHEP research topics. The first application of the 3D-DMTA taking into account the explored models will aim at depicting the ecological niche partitioning among sympatric present-day ruminants at the Bialowieza Primeval Forest in Poland. This case study based on a relatively pristine community will be a critical comparative case for paleocommunity analyses, and in addition will have implications for conservation politics of the European Bison, the emblematic mammal of Bialowieza. The second application will aim at evaluating spatial variation in diet and thus ecological plasticity of a ruminant, a particularly important dimension of paleoecological reconstructions. The studied case will be that of the small duiker (Philantomba sp.) dispersed along ecological gradients in the African forest. This antelope feeds mainly on fruits, a resource which is affected by habitat reduction due to anthropic pressures. The third application will focus on a fossil case study. We will consider the reduncine antelopes from the Plio-Pleistocene deposits of the Omo valley, Ethiopia. We will explore the effects on the diet of these abundantly preserved ruminants of an extremely well-recorded environmental change that occurred 2 My ago. This analysis will have implications on the understanding of evolution in African herbivore paleocommunities. Finally, TRIDENT will aim at promoting the 3D-DMTA to a large audience beyond basic research community. @-TRIDENT will allow this as well as it will guarantee post-project longevity. @-TRIDENT will be a sharing web interface on which development in analytic tools and software including tutorials, data issued from the controlled-food testing, as well as application on cases studies will be uploaded for students and researchers interested in the wide fields of ecology, conservation, agronomy, tribology, and performing basic or applied, academic or private research. To sum up, TRIDENT has the ambition to build, apply and share models for the development of the 3D-DMTA in ecology and paleontology. Getting together agronomists, tribologists, and paleontologists will make possible to overpass any limits in the course of TRIDENT. .