Meeting Abstract

33.2  Friday, Jan. 4  Effects of morphological phenotypic plasticity on cichlid transcriptome expression CLEMMENSEN, SF*; HULSEY, CD; University of Tennessee; University of Tennessee sclemmen@utk.edu

Trophic divergence in cichlid fish is linked to shifts in pharyngeal jaw morphology. However, it is unknown how much of this dramatic trophic specialization is due to the ability of these species to respond dynamically to their preferred diet type. Hypertrophy is observed in the major muscles of the lower pharyngeal jaw muscular sling in response to a diet shift in lab-reared Vieja maculicauda cichlids. We used next-gen whole transcriptome sequencing to identify genes that are up- and downregulated in these muscles in response to diet shifts.