Meeting Abstract

7.4  Saturday, Jan. 4 08:45  Pectoral Fin and Feeding Kinematics in Rock Dwelling Malawi Cichlids RUPP, M.F.*; HULSEY, C.D.; University of Tennessee Knoxville; University of Tennessee Knoxville mrupp@utk.edu

Adaptive radiations such as Malawi cichlids provide an excellent opportunity to elucidate the underlying forces behind evolution and how high amounts of species diversity are maintained in a largely shared environment. One group of particular interest is the rock-dwelling mbuna, which is one of the two major clades of Malawi cichlids. To try and better understand the factors behind their evolution into distinct niches and how such a large number of species coexist, we investigated differences in feeding kinematics of three rock-dwelling mbuna species via high speed video. All three species were filmed feeding from the top, side, and bottom of an experimental “rock” in order to explore how feeding orientation might influence trophic kinematics. Using this data we were able to make inferences about how the incredibly species rich group of mbuna in Lake Malawi could be partitioning their habitat to facilitate coexistence.