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Fishing out a feeding paradox

If an animal’s body shape is specialized in a way that aids feeding on specific organisms, does this restrict what the animal can prey on? An observation of fishes feeding in the wild might now help to settle this question.
  1. Sebastian Kruppert

    1. Sebastian Kruppert is in the Department of Biology, Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, Friday Harbor, Washington 98250, USA.

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  2. Adam P. Summers

    1. Adam P. Summers is in the Department of Biology, Friday Harbor Laboratories, University of Washington, Friday Harbor, Washington 98250, USA.

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A chance observation of fish behaviour, made during an underwater survey along the eastern shore of Lake Tanganyika in Tanzania, has now been reported in American Naturalist by Golcher-Benavides and Wagner1. Their observation neatly ties together 40-year-old laboratory data2 and a model of evolution based on an idea known as optimal-foraging theory3.

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Nature 571, 181-182 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-02008-6

References

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