Meeting Abstract

P2-53  Sunday, Jan. 5  Learning to swim: evolutionary transition from terrestrial to aquatic life in South American coralsnakes JACOBS, JL*; HALL, AS; SMITH, EN; University of Texas at Arlington; Thermo Fisher Scientific; University of Texas at Arlington justin.jacobs@uta.edu

Without limbs for grasping or climbing, snakes must use only bones and associated musculature of their skull and spine to successfully thrive in their environment. Among snakes, those in aquatic environments differ in substantive ways from terrestrial snakes: more teeth, flatter skulls, flattened tails, etc. We investigated the transition from terrestrial to aquatic life in a radiation of new world elapid snakes, coralsnakes in the genus Micrurus. Using a phylogenetically-aware analysis of morphology, we used high resolution computed tomography (CT) to study skull and vertebral morphology. We document character evolution in this ecological transition and analyzed these data using three-dimensional geometric morphometrics. By comparing our taxa to more distantly related coralsnakes, we reconstruct the evolution of Micrurus morphology and, by extension—ecology, over transitions to aquatic life. We also discuss our ongoing study seeking parallel adaptations to aquatic life in the Asian elapid snakes.