Abstract
Marsupials exhibit unique biological features that provide fascinating insights into many aspects of mammalian development. These include their distinctive mode of reproduction, altricial stage at birth, and the associated heterochrony that is required for their crawl to the pouch and teat attachment. Marsupials are also an invaluable resource for mammalian comparative biology, forming a distinct lineage from the extant placental and egg-laying monotreme mammals. Despite their unique biology, marsupial resources are lagging behind those available for placentals. The fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata) is a laboratory based marsupial model, with simple and robust husbandry requirements and a short reproductive cycle making it amenable to experimental manipulations. Here we present a detailed staging series for the fat-tailed dunnart, focusing on their accelerated development of the forelimbs and jaws. This study provides the first skeletal developmental series on S. crassicaudata and provides a fundamental resource for future studies exploring mammalian diversification, development and evolution.
Highlights
Marsupials exhibit unique biological features that provide fascinating insights into many aspects of mammalian development
The marsupial models, Macropus eugenii and Monodelphis domestica, have been studied in regard to diverse biological phenomena, including sex determination[21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28], reproduction[29,30,31,32,33,34], genomic imprinting[35,36,37,38,39] and other aspects of development[40,41,42,43,44,45,46]. Given their ease of captive breeding and experimental manipulation, M. domestica has been used in research across North America, for example to model craniofacial phenotypes observed in children treated with thalidomide[47], and to reconstruct the evolution of the mammalian middle ear[48]
Our study focused on characterizing early skeletal development in the fattailed dunnart to establish it as a comparative laboratory-based model for mammalian skeletal osteogenesis
Summary
Marsupials exhibit unique biological features that provide fascinating insights into many aspects of mammalian development These include their distinctive mode of reproduction, altricial stage at birth, and the associated heterochrony that is required for their crawl to the pouch and teat attachment. The fat-tailed dunnart (Sminthopsis crassicaudata; hereafter referred to as the dunnart) is an established marsupial model that has been used successfully for studies of brain development, fertilisation, reproduction, respiration, nutrition, thermoregulation, vision and immunology[50,51,52,53,54,55,56] In this context, expansion of the developmental and genetics resources available for the dunnart would further its value as a model for investigating mammalian biology and evolution. A detailed description and staging of these events in the dunnart has yet to be established
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