Dr Laura Porro publishes paper in Frontiers in Zoology

The lab recently had a paper published in the journal Frontiers in Zoology: Schwarz, Konow, Porro, Heiss. 2020. Ontogenetic plasticity in cranial morphology is associated with a change in the food processing behavior in Alpine newts. Frontiers in Zoology 17, 34. doi.org/10.1186/s12983-020-00373-x

The feeding apparatus of salamanders consists mainly of the cranium, mandible, teeth, hyobranchial apparatus and the muscles of the cranial region. The morphology of the feeding apparatus in turn determines the boundary conditions for possible food processing (i.e., intraoral mechanical reduction) mechanisms. However, the morphology of the feeding apparatus changes substantially during metamorphosis, prompting the hypothesis that larvae might use a different food processing mechanism than post-metamorphic adults. Salamandrid newts with facultative metamorphosis are suitable for testing this hypothesis as adults with divergent feeding apparatus morphologies often coexist in the same population, share similar body sizes, and feed on overlapping prey spectra.

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