Re: The Roosting Hypothesis

[don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com>]

Well, just to stress a point -- I've never consciously advanced GFTR as a 
hypothesis -- it is just a lifestyle --  speculative selective implications of 
which falsify a hypothesis. E.g., that a trees-down flight path would 
inevitably be coupled with or presaged by "arboreal" skeletal adaptations. 
:
If I actually used the phrase "GFTR hypothesis", it was my mistake,  and I 
retract it.

 Although it definitely predicts worn claws :).

I also think that GSP's effort to rule habitual terrestrial with the hind foot 
as out or in is extremely sensible, even long overdue. 

------------------------------
On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 8:11 PM EDT Mike Habib wrote:

>On Jul 12, 2013, at 4:13 PM, don ohmes <d_ohmes@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> 
> 2) the most compelling reason to put the birds-to-be in general -- and the 
> specific specimens we talk about -- into trees, is that the trees were there. 
> 
> As viable as a GFTR lifestyle is today, it logically "must" have offered even 
> more benefits to small bipeds at some point in the Triassic/Jurassic 
> timeframe. I base this in part on the idea that foraging in a tree is more 
> difficult than simply hiding in one. 
> 
> It follows that, pteros notwithstanding, the safety benefits accruing to even 
> marginal tree-climbing talents in a largely ground-based animal would have 
> been significant -- especially given that it's major predators were also 
> short-armed bipeds. And indeed, the pteros may have been crucial to driving 
> morphology aiding rapid escape *from* a tree.
>
>Agreed, it is not hard to see how that set of behaviors might reduce 
>mortality/improve nesting.  The complication, of course, is that this doesn't 
>mean all taxa (or even any taxa) actually used that advantage.  That's not 
>bad, as plausibility is often all we can get, but it does mean that building 
>further downstream predictions is pretty tenuous (for example, trying to 
>create elaborate arboreal flight origin scenarios).
>
>
> Congrats on the new gig,  BTW...
>
>Thanks!  SoCal treats me well.  I don't know if DMLers are going to SVP, but I 
>live near the conference hotel.  I could recommend a DML breakfast location if 
>folks wanted to do that.
>
>--Mike
>
>
>Michael Habib
>Assistant Professor of Cell and Neurobiology
>Keck School of Medicine of USC
>University of Southern California
>Bishop Research Building; Room 403
>1333 San Pablo Street, Los Angeles 90089-9112
>biologyinmotion@gmail.com
>(443) 280-0181
>
>