Ecomorphological adaptation in three mudskippers

Authors: Gianluca Polgar Mehdi Ghanbarifardi Salvatore Milli Ainhoa Agorreta Mansour Aliabadian Hamid Reza Esmaeili Tsung Fei Khang

Publish Date: 2017/03/07

Volume: 795, Issue: 1, Pages: 91-111

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Abstract

We hypothesise that the body shapes of three mudskipper species Boleophthalmus dussumieri Periophthalmus waltoni and Scartelaos tenuis are ecomorphological adaptations to different epi and infaunal habitats We investigated i the association between burrow density and selected ecological variables ii the phylogenetic relationships among these species based on two mtDNA and one nDNA markers iii their geometric morphometrics and ancestral shape reconstructions based on twodimensional landmark configurations and iv their body surfacetovolume ratios SAV based on a geometric model Boleophthalmus dussumieri and S tenuis are more closely related and more elongated than P waltoni the body of S tenuis also has a higher SAV and its elongated shape appears to be a divergent trait P waltoni is found in a wide range of conditions including vegetated habitats B dussumieri is associated with lowenergy conditions and fine unvegetated deposits and S tenuis is associated with highenergy conditions and coarser noncohesive sediments These results suggest that body elongation in Scartelaos species is a divergent locomotory adaptation to marine habitats characterised by semiliquid and less cohesive sediments The more compact body shape of Periophthalmus species is hypothesised to have evolved from a gobionelline ancestor and is proposed to be a preadaptation to subaerial locomotion in semiterrestrial habitatsThanks to Adeljean Ho Florida Institute of Technology for his comments on geometric morphometrics Mike Collyer morphmet forum provided information on using geomorph to perform Procrustes ANOVA Thanks to Michael Steele and Malcolm Ringland Anderson Universiti Brunei Darussalam for their assistance on preliminary statistical analyses thanks also to Antonino Briguglio Universiti Brunei Darussalam for his comments on allometric morphometry to David Clayton Sultan Qaboos University for several discussions on the ecological analyses and to Carmelo Fruciano Queensland University of Technology for his insight on the integration of morphometric phylogenetic and ecological analyses Thanks to several anonymous referees for their helpful and constructive criticisms The authors also wish to thank the Peykavanshargh Company for their technical assistance during the sediment grain size analyses and Dr SRM Fatemi for his map of coastal habitats of the northern coasts of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad for financial support 3/24103 the Environment Departments of Hormuzgan Bushehr and SistanBaluchistan provinces for their assistance in the field and Abdolwahed Pehpouri Ahmad Mahmoudi and Mojtaba Masoudi for their help in the field and in the laboratory

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