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Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Coral reefs; diversity; ecological specialization; sibling species; speciation; symbiosis; Synalpheus
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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences
Species Boundaries, Specialization, And The Radiation Of Sponge-Dwelling Alpheid Shrimp, J Duffy
Species Boundaries, Specialization, And The Radiation Of Sponge-Dwelling Alpheid Shrimp, J Duffy
VIMS Articles
Microevolutionary studies and natural history suggest that host-specialization has promoted the high diversity of tropical sponge-dwelling snapping shrimps (Decapoda, Alpheidae, Synalpheus). Yet the taxonomic difficulty of this genus has precluded rigorous tests of this hypothesis. S. rathbunae Coutiere is among the most abundant invertebrates inhabiting the framework of sponges and dead coral that forms the floor of Caribbean coral reefs. Even within a small area S. rathbunae exhibits the apparently wide variation in size, color, and morphology that has long frustrated efforts to identify and define species boundaries within this large (> 100 described species) genus. Here I show that …