99% of the known species of fish belong to the class of Attopterigiabout 30,000 species that populate the waters, both sweet and savory, from all over the world. An immense and very diversified group (think of a Sardine, a historian and a sole, to mention three well -known fish), which, however, as a study published on Plos Biologyis surprisingly not very original when it comes to Evolutionary adaptations for hunting. All fish, in fact, use one of two “strategies”, which rarely overlap: it is an inevitable evolutionary compromise that we now explain to you.
Dentons or bite? The two adaptations for hunting invented by fish are the teeth size and the flexibility of the jaw. Some fish “have grown” the teeth, others instead prefer to be able to open their mouth to a very large corner to swallow their prey.
What the University of California team discovered Davis, who conducted the study, is that these Two characteristics are mutually exclusive, and very rarely they find themselves in the same species.
The study. To reach this conclusion, scientists filmed 161 different species of fish engaged in hunting. The data served to compare their strategies and trace its evolution: this is how the team has discovered that the fish with large teeth use a great variety of hunting techniques, and the same do those with the extendable jaws; But it is Different strategies, directly connected to the morphological characteristics.
Or one or the other. Specifically, the analysis revealed that the fish that have maintained i small teeth have an extendable jawand use it to capture the prey “sucking” them from the water: the more open the mouth, the more effective the suck is. Fish with i big teethon the other hand, focus more on quick swimming, with sudden shots that bring them closer to the prey; At that point, the dentons are used to immobilize and hurt it.
Incompatible characteristics. The researchers also calculated the ideal size of the teeth of a fish that uses the jaw extensible to capture prey: it is four times smaller than the ideal size of the teeth of a fish that swims quickly. In simpler words, the two adaptations (dentons or sucking) are incompatible: either you grow the first or points on the “mug opening”.
