Diversity, Volume 14, Issue 8
August 2022 - 111 articles
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Cover Story: Although trophic diversification is one of the main mechanisms of adaptive radiation, it is still little known how novel feeding strategies evolve. Studying the trophic diversity of Garra elucidates this issue. Generally, Garra is a highly specialized periphyton feeder with widened jaws modified as scrapers. However, it could give rise to six sympatric ecomorphs that are strikingly diverse in mouth morphology in a river of the White Nile basin (East Africa). Our study revealed three feeding modes, with a transition from periphytonophagy to zoophagy. It appears to be the case that Garra could re-specialize out of its ancestral specialization despite narrow trophic adaptation. This does not support the generalists-to-specialists hypothesis on the origin of specializations, and provides an insight into the feeding novelty origin. View this paper