PADILLA, D.K.; State University of New York, Stony Brook: Inducible offenses in a marine snail: phenotypic plasticity in feeding structures, food preferences, and dispersal potential.

Although the ecological and evolutionary consequences of inducible defenses have gained a great deal of attention by scientists, inducible offenses have had considerably less attention. Like inducible defenses, inducible offenses are triggered by different environmental circumstances and increase the performance of individuals. Inducible offenses include morphologies and behaviors associated with prey capture and consumption as well as competition. Snails in the family Littorinidae have been found to have phenotypically plastic feeding morphologies. However, to date, only those species in the genus Lacuna have been found to have inducible offenses, which include radular morphologies and feeding preferences. In addition, two species of Lacuna, L. vincta and L. variegata, show differences in dispersal potential as a function of feeding history. These inducible features could have consequences for the population biology and ecology of these important herbivores and their ability to impact algal prey.