Meeting Abstract
The teeth of fishes have several roles; they serve in prey capture, retention, and processing. The link between tooth shape and function in prey capture and processing is reasonably well understood, at least in the context of the oral and pharyngeal jaws. Many lineages of fishes have teeth on cranial bones that do not have obvious opposing teeth, the vomer and palatine for example. In this study we investigate the puncture and draw performance of vomerine teeth and compare to the premaxillary teeth of the piscivorous ling cod, Ophiodon elongatus. We measured the force to pierce prey and to remove prey from embedded teeth across a size range from 205 to 836mm SL. Smaller ling cod required proportionally less force than larger fish for vomerine teeth to pierce their prey, and premaxilary teeth showed the opposite trend. The force to remove a prey item from the grasp of the teeth showed the same trend as puncture force across the size range. These data suggest that as the lingcod grows there is some shift in function from vomerine to premaxillary teeth. Smaller ling cod are likely to use vomerine teeth during capture, while larger ling cod are likely to use premaxillary teeth during capture. It can be inferred that premaxillary teeth in smaller ling cod are used for grasping and processing of prey because a large force that was required for the prey to tear away from the premaxillary teeth. Larger ling cod use vomerine teeth to process prey because a larger force that was required for the prey to tear away from the vomerine teeth.
