KERFOOT, J. R., Jr..; TURINGAN, R. G. ; STOECKLIN, G. ; Florida Institute of Technology; Florida Institute of Technology; Florida Institute of Technology: The effects of hyoid-mandible and opercular-mandiblelinkage disruption on feeding perfomance in the teleost fish, Centropomus undecimalis.

The complex array of musculoskeletal linkages in the feeding mechanism of teleost fishes underlies prey capture performance in these fishes. In an attempt to explore the role of the opercular and hyoid linkages in feeding, we compared the kinematics of prey capture in the common snook, Centropomus undecimalis, subjected to two linkage severance treatments. One treatment involved snook with their opercular-mandible linkage surgically cut; in the other treatment, we severed the hyoid-mandible linkage. In each treatment, we compared the kinematics of prey capture while feeding on live fish prey between normal snook (i.e., all linkages intact) and the same individual after the linkage-disruption surgery. A series of paired-t tests revealed that most kinematic variables (e.g., maximum gape, hyoid depression) differed between normal snook and the same individual with its hyoid-mandible linkage severed. In contrast, snook performed equally well before and after surgery to sever the opercular-mandible linkage. We hypothesize that the hyoid-mandible and the opercular-mandible linkages play different roles during mouth opening in teleost fishes. Current and future studies in our laboratory compare the performance of these linkages among teleost fishes that employ different techniques of prey capture (i.e, pure suction, ram-suction, and biting).