Meeting Abstract

81.1  Friday, Jan. 7  Functional and morphological convergence in durophagous moray eels REECE, JOSHUA S*; MEHTA, RITA S; ALFARO, MICHAEL; Univ. of California, Santa Cruz; Univ. of California, Santa Cruz; Univ. of California, Los Angeles josh830@gmail.com

Does functional convergence in diet result from morphological convergence? Morphology is constantly changing to maximize performance in response to selective pressures, and this is particularly true for the feeding morphology of predatory fishes. Dietary shifts from piscivory towards consuming hard prey items (i.e. durophagy) require a suite of structural modifications that can include robust jaws, large cranial muscles, and blunt teeth. Because of the morphological diversity of the components underlying durophagy, there may be diverse combinations of traits that can confer this ability. Moray eels (Muraenidae) comprise a clade of roughly 200 species of reef fishes that are primarily piscivorous. However, around 15 species of morays (~8%) are durophagous. Previous work has demonstrated that the durophagous condition in moray eels is not homologous, and has evolved at least four separate times between 20 and 4 MYA. To determine morphological convergence, we examine several measures of cranial morphology and use a multilocus phylogeny of durophagous and piscivorous moray eel species to reconstruct ancestral characters states. For each character, we determined whether the degree and direction of change between a durophagous species and the most recent common ancestor shared with a piscivorous relative was significantly greater than the mean character change among all piscivorous species. We then demonstrate how the feeding apparatus is modified in each lineage to produce the durophagous condition. Our findings reveal how this highly derived condition has evolved repeatedly within Muraenidae and the morphological diversity underlying this relatively uncommon feeding specialization.