The role of feeding morphology and competition in governing the diet breadth of sympatric stomatopod crustaceans.

ABSTRACT: Competition for food drives divergence and specialization in feeding morphology. Stomatopod crustaceans have two kinds of highly specialized feeding appendages: either elongate spear-like appendages (spearers) used to ambush soft-bodied evasive prey or hammer-like appendages (smashers) that produce extremely high forces used both to break hard-shelled prey and to capture evasive prey. To evaluate associations between appendage type and feeding ecology, the diet of two small smasher and spearer species (size range: 21-27 mm) that co-occur were compared. Stable isotope analysis and the Bayesian mixing model MixSIAR were used to estimate the proportional contributions of prey types to the diet. Both species had relatively wide diets that included hard-shelled and soft-bodied pre

SUBMITTER: deVries MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5414697 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature