Functional and Comparative Morphology of the Nasal Cavity in Phyllostomid Bats

DEDICATION To my parents, who always encouraged me to chase my dreams EPIGRAPH History suggests that the road to a firm research consensus is extraordinarily arduous-Thomas S. Kuhn vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank my advisor, Betsy Dumont, for her patient guidance and sage mentoring during the course of my dissertation. She has provided an enriching intellectual environment, and I owe much of my academic development to her. Thanks to Blair Perot, without whom I could not have completed the substantial biomechanics component to my project. His constant encouragement and good humor kept me energized throughout. Sheila Patek and Duncan Irschick both brought unique conceptual and practical perspectives to my committee, and I greatly appreciate their thoughtful contributions. Finally, though not a part of my committee officially, Tim Smith of Slippery Rock University deserves a special mention. Tim taught me most of the histological techniques that I know, he has been incredibly generous with his time and resources, and perhaps most importantly, he has made major theoretical contributions to my understanding of the mammalian nose and to my dissertation generally. I cannot express enough my appreciation for his help and generosity over the years. Much of my work involved destructive sampling of fluid-preserved museum specimens. In broad terms I would like to thank the generations of naturalists, field biologists, curators, benefactors, and others who have made such collections possible in one way or another. I have always cherished working in such places, which would not be possible without the forward-looking spirit of so many others. For my dissertation I used specimens from the American Museum of Natural History and from the UMass Natural History Collections. I acknowledge the staff of both of these institutions, and in particular I thank Kate Doyle of UMass and Nancy Simmons and Eileen Westwig of the AMNH. Thanks to the many folks who have helped me troubleshoot histological techniques, in particular De Vries provided generous lab resources and logistical support for the bulk of my histological work. Skye Long and Beth Jakob provided lab space and equipment for paraffin embedding. Nadya Shlykova also helped with microscopy. For assistance with computer modeling, I owe immense thanks to Dan Pulaski, who has always been generous with his time and expertise. James Hagadorn generously provided access to a CT scanner at Amherst College, and Fettah Kosar facilitated my use of a micro-CT scanner at Harvard. Chris Zusi, Yang Song, and …