Meeting Abstract
Hybridization between species is a common occurrence in nature that has the potential to enhance genetic and phenotypic variation, and it may play a significant role in the evolution of functional systems. We investigated the functional morphology of feeding in bluegill and green sunfish and naturally occurring F1 hybrids between the two species. Five individuals each of the two species and the hybrid were filmed at 2000 frames/sec feeding in the lab. We used landmark morphometrics to quantify the cranial movements during prey capture sequences. As expected, the hybrid was intermediate in feeding kinematics between the two parent species. However, hybrid kinematics were distinctly more similar to the green sunfish than the bluegill, indicating that, while the hybrid possesses a 50:50 genetic combination of the parent species this does not translate into feeding kinematics that are perfectly intermediate. This may be due to non-linear relationships between morphology and kinematics.
