AI Article Synopsis
- - The study examined how different body shapes of the carabid beetle Damaster blaptoides influence their feeding strategies on snails, leading to two extreme morphologies: small-headed and large-headed types.
- - The small-headed beetles excel at penetrating thicker-shelled snails, while large-headed beetles are better suited for crushing thinner-shelled snails, highlighting a trade-off between the ability to crush and the ability to access prey.
- - These functional trade-offs suggest that morphological differences significantly impact how predators handle resources and contribute to the diversity seen in predator and prey species.
Article Abstract
We explored how functional trade-offs in resource handling strategies are associated with the divergent morphology of predators. The malacophagous carabid Damaster blaptoides shows two extreme morphologies in the forebody; there is an elongate small-headed type and a stout large-headed type. A feeding experiment showed that the small-headed type obtained a high feeding performance on snails with a thick shell and a large aperture by penetrating the shell with its head. In contrast, the large-headed type showed a high feeding performance on snails that had a thin shell and a small aperture, and they ate these prey by crushing the shell. The large-headed, strong-jawed beetles are efficient at shell crushing but are ineffective at shell entry; the large mandibles and musculature that allow for shell crushing make the beetle's head too wide to penetrate shell apertures. On the other hand, small-headed, weak-jawed beetles crush poorly but can reach into shells for direct predation on snail bodies. These findings are hypothesized to be functional trade-offs between force and fit due to morphological constraints. This trade-off would be a primary mechanism affecting both resource handling ability in animals and phenotypic diversity in predators and prey.
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| http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/518182 | DOI Listing |
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