The origins and maintenance of biodiversity is in part influenced by natural selection acting on intraspecific variation. Intraspecific (and inter-) variation in functional phenotypes can relate strongly to dietary differences and many adaptions relate to diet and how organisms process food. Diversity of functional feeding anatomy is particularly impressive in fishes and correlates with various interspecific ecological specializations. Therefore, fish are particularly suitable for researching feeding specialization, due to rapid divergence and parallel evolution in many taxa. They also respond more readily to changes in environmental factors compared to many other vertebrates, in part due to their developmental flexibility in body size and maturation and great number of “independent” skeletal elements.
In this project we use Arctic charr as a model species to study: evolution, degree of phenotypic parallelism, plasticity and the developmental origins of specific feeding elements (in functional cranial bones, e.g., size and shape of bones and teeth characteristics).
