Emily Moes

EMILY MOES, then a graduate student at University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, received funding in April 2022 to aid research on “Associations between Child Dental Fluctuating Asymmetry and Maternal Environmental Conditions,” supervised by Dr. Heather Edgar. Health and lifespan relate to experiences in utero, demonstrating the connection between gestational stress and adult health outcomes. The first years of life, including time spent in utero, are profoundly influenced by mothers, since the earliest stages of development unfold in direct interaction with maternal biology. This relationship is considered invisible in the bioarchaeological record, limiting research on factors that influenced health in the past. Understanding plastic responses to maternal influence in shaping long-term phenotypic trajectories requires the ability to identify and interpret evidence of plasticity to environmental signals in hard tissues. The primary objective of this research is to test the connection between evidence of plasticity in the dentition with aspects of early life. Dental fluctuating asymmetry, a measure of developmental instability, is compared to sociocultural and environmental factors using data from dental casts and associated health records from a 20th century longitudinal growth study. Results suggest that in their prenatal and childhood environments, females’ dental plasticity may be more responsive to frailty or chronic stresses while males may be more affected by comparatively acute stresses. This research shows sex-specific differences in the timing of stress exposures is critical to understanding how developmental systems respond to early environments.