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The Role Of Local Adaptation On Biting Performance In Trinidadian Guppies, Hannah E. Cohen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Divergent selection pressures in populations that occupy different environments can result in phenotypic differentiation in traits that provide a local fitness advantage. Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) populations are separated by physical barriers such as waterfalls which result in repeated shifts in selective pressures from predator avoidance in high predation environments towards resource competition in low predation environments. Such shifts in selection pressures have previously shown that a range of locally adapted morphological and behavioral traits are changed. However, the role of local adaptation on biting behaviors remains unclear. I analyzed morphological differences such as body length, jaw position, …