Playing out Liem’s Paradox: Opportunistic Piscivory across Lake Tanganyikan Cichlids

Golcher‐Benavides, Jimena; Wagner, Catherine E.

doi:10.1086/704169

Cited by 23 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…The dietary specialization observed in most snakes combined with their high diversity further suggests that knowledge of tempo and mode in snake diet evolution may also yield more general insights into the mechanisms by which ecological and morphological novelty arises in adaptively radiating clades. The preponderance of diverse clades of dietary specialists among snakes [ 39 ] suggests, for example, that ecological specialists are no less evolutionarily versatile (sensu [ 40 ]) than ecological generalists, perhaps pointing to the importance of behavioral flexibility or a labile feeding apparatus in facilitating ecological shifts [ 41 – 43 ]. Snakes also display a complex mixture of generalized and specialized morphologies related to diet, and understanding the pattern and timing of ecological shifts in relation to phenotype may help answer questions about the roles of ecological opportunity and developmental constraints as controls on adaptive radiation [ 44 , 45 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Gründler

Rabosky

2021

PLoS Biol

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The Cenozoic marked a period of dramatic ecological opportunity in Earth history due to the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs as well as to long-term physiographic changes that created new biogeographic theaters and new habitats. Snakes underwent massive ecological diversification during this period, repeatedly evolving novel dietary adaptations and prey preferences. The evolutionary tempo and mode of these trophic ecological changes remain virtually unknown, especially compared with co-radiating lineages of birds and mammals that are simultaneously predators and prey of snakes. Here, we assemble a dataset on snake diets (34,060 observations on the diets of 882 species) to investigate the history and dynamics of the multidimensional trophic niche during the global radiation of snakes. Our results show that per-lineage dietary niche breadths remained remarkably constant even as snakes diversified to occupy disparate outposts of dietary ecospace. Rapid increases in dietary diversity and complexity occurred in the early Cenozoic, and the overall rate of ecospace expansion has slowed through time, suggesting a potential response to ecological opportunity in the wake of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction. Explosive bursts of trophic innovation followed colonization of the Nearctic and Neotropical realms by a group of snakes that today comprises a majority of living snake diversity. Our results indicate that repeated transformational shifts in dietary ecology are important drivers of adaptive radiation in snakes and provide a framework for analyzing and visualizing the evolution of complex ecological phenotypes on phylogenetic trees.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Gründler

Rabosky

2021

PLoS Biol

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“…Many benthivorous fishes are able to feed in mid-water using suction rather than a combination of suction and biting ( Liem 1980 ; Pratchett et al 2001 ; Golcher-Benavides and Wagner 2019 ), and our results suggest most butterflyfishes are also capable of such behavioral modulation ( Copus and Gibb 2013 ). Morphometric measurements of the three traits capable of increasing suction strength (ascending process length, mouth width, and head width) indicate that zooplanktivores likely produce suction strengths similar to many benthivorous species, such as Chaetodon argentatus , Chaetodon vagabundus , Heniochus chrysostomus , Heniochus monoceros , and Coradion altivelis ( Fig.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

“…4A, C, E, and G ). Such versatility has likely allowed benthivorous lineages to exploit similarly-sized prey in mid-water when such resources are abundant or when competition is reduced ( Liem 1980 ; Robinson and Wilson 1998 ; Bellwood et al 2006 ; Golcher-Benavides and Wagner 2019 ). Indeed, many butterflyfish species are opportunistic and will abandon their preferred prey to feed exclusively on abundant plankton for up to a few days ( Motta 1988 ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Constraints on the Ecomorphological Convergence of Zooplanktivorous Butterflyfishes

Hodge

Song

Wightman

et al. 2021

Integrative Organismal Biology

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Whether distantly related organisms evolve similar strategies to meet the demands of a shared ecological niche depends on their evolutionary history and the nature of form-function relationships. In fishes, the visual identification and consumption of microscopic zooplankters, selective zooplanktivory, is a distinct type of foraging often associated with a suite of morphological specialisations. Previous work has identified inconsistencies in the trajectory and magnitude of morphological change following transitions to selective zooplanktivory, alluding to the diversity and importance of ancestral effects. Here we investigate whether transitions to selective zooplanktivory have influenced the morphological evolution of marine butterflyfishes (family Chaetodontidae), a group of small-prey specialists well known for several types of high-precision benthivory. Using Bayesian ancestral state estimation, we inferred the recent evolution of zooplanktivory among benthivorous ancestors that hunted small invertebrates and browsed by picking or scraping coral polyps. Traits related to the capture of prey appear to be functionally versatile with little morphological distinction between species with benthivorous and planktivorous foraging modes. In contrast, multiple traits related to prey detection or swimming performance are evolving toward novel, zooplanktivore-specific optima. Despite a relatively short evolutionary history, general morphological indistinctiveness, and evidence of constraint on the evolution of body size, convergent evolution has closed a near significant amount of the morphological distance between zooplanktivorous species. Overall, our findings describe the extent to which the functional demands associated with selective zooplanktivory have led to generalisable morphological features among butterflyfishes and highlight the importance of ancestral effects in shaping patterns of morphological convergence.

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“…These marks are more than likely to be part of the ongoing balance between competing networks of masculinizing and feminizing genes. The ever-growing genomic resources for cichlids [Brawand et al, 2014;Salzburger, 2018;Faber-Hammond et al, 2019] and the integrative and active research community surrounding the behavior [York et al, 2015;Maruska and Fernald, 2018], ecology [Golcher-Benavides and Wagner, 2019], and evolution [Wagner et al, 2012;Kornfield and Smith, 2000] as well as commercial aspects of this group provide exciting opportunities.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Epigenetic Regulation and Environmental Sex Determination in Cichlid Fishes

Renn

Hurd

2021

Sex Dev

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Studying environmental sex determination (ESD) in cichlids provides a phylogenetic and comparative approach to understand the evolution of the underlying mechanisms, their impact on the evolution of the overlying systems, and the neuroethology of life history strategies. Natural selection normally favors parents who invest equally in the development of male and female offspring, but evolution may favor deviations from this 50:50 ratio when environmental conditions produce an advantage for doing so. Many species of cichlids demonstrate ESD in response to water chemistry (temperature, pH, and oxygen concentration). The relative strengths of and the exact interactions between these factors vary between congeners, demonstrating genetic variation in sensitivity. The presence of sizable proportions of the less common sex towards the environmental extremes in most species strongly suggests the presence of some genetic sex-determining loci acting in parallel with the ESD factors. Sex determination and differentiation in these species does not seem to result in the organization of a final and irreversible sexual fate, so much as a life-long ongoing battle between competing male- and female-determining genetic and hormonal networks governed by epigenetic factors. We discuss what is and is not known about the epigenetic mechanism behind the differentiation of both gonads and sex differences in the brain. Beyond the well-studied tilapia species, the 2 best-studied dwarf cichlid systems showing ESD are the South American genus <i>Apistogramma</i> and the West African genus <i>Pelvicachromis</i>. Both species demonstrate male morphs with alternative reproductive tactics. We discuss the further neuroethology opportunities such systems provide to the study of epigenetics of alternative life history strategies and other behavioral variation.

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Playing out Liem’s Paradox: Opportunistic Piscivory across Lake Tanganyikan Cichlids

Cited by 23 publications

References 45 publications

Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Rapid increase in snake dietary diversity and complexity following the end-Cretaceous mass extinction

Constraints on the Ecomorphological Convergence of Zooplanktivorous Butterflyfishes

Epigenetic Regulation and Environmental Sex Determination in Cichlid Fishes

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