Meeting Abstract
Trophic divergence in cichlid fish is linked to shifts in pharyngeal jaw morphology. For instance, in the Heroine cichlids of Central America, the ability to crush hard-shelled mollusks is a convergent phenotype with multiple evolutionary origins. These durophagous species often have very similar pharyngeal jaw morphologies associated with the pharyngeal jaw apparatus and some of these similarities could be due to phenotypically plastic responses to mechanical stress. We examined both bone and soft tissue differences between durophagous and non-durophagous Heroine cichlids and compared them to phenotypically plasticity morphologies induced through diet manipulations to determine the degree to which convergent morphologies in durophagous cichlids were likely due to phenotypic plasticity.
