新环境中的食物资源专业化被认为是自适应辐射多样化的共同轴。喂养专业化通常与惊人的形态适应相结合,并举例说明形态与饮食之间的关系(表型-环境相关性),如在中看到的,例如,达尔文雀,夏威夷蜘蛛,和东非湖泊中的丽鱼科鱼辐射。先前已将丽鱼科鱼迅速开发并占据各种不同栖息地的潜力归因于其营养结构(包括咽颌装置)的变异性和适应性。在这里,我们报告了一项相互移植实验,旨在探索高度专业化的丽鱼科鱼物种中营养结构的适应性。更具体地说,我们从坦噶尼喀湖强迫了两种常见但生态上不同的丽鱼科鱼,Tropheusmoorii(摇滚居民),和博伦盖(沙族),生活在他们喜欢的和不喜欢的栖息地(沙子和岩石,分别)。我们测量了它们在不同栖息地类型上的总体表现,并探讨了适应性表型可塑性是否参与了适应。我们发现,虽然栖息地对X.Boulengeri的表现没有影响,T.moorii在其首选栖息地的表现明显更好。尽管实验时间长达数月,我们没有发现下咽颌骨形态的变化,这表明该性状具有适应性表型可塑性。
Food resource specialization within novel environments is considered a common axis of diversification in adaptive radiations. Feeding specializations are often coupled with striking morphological adaptations and exemplify the relation between morphology and diet (phenotype-environment correlations), as seen in, for example, Darwin finches, Hawaiian spiders, and the cichlid fish radiations in East African lakes. The cichlids\' potential to rapidly exploit and occupy a variety of different habitats has previously been attributed to the variability and adaptability of their trophic structures including the pharyngeal jaw apparatus. Here we report a reciprocal transplant experiment designed to explore the adaptability of the trophic structures in highly specialized cichlid fish species. More specifically, we forced two common but ecologically distinct cichlid species from Lake Tanganyika, Tropheus moorii (rock-dweller), and Xenotilapia boulengeri (sand-dweller), to live on their preferred as well as on an unpreferred habitat (sand and rock, respectively). We measured their overall performance on the different habitat types and explored whether adaptive phenotypic plasticity is involved in adaptation. We found that, while habitat had no effect on the performance of X. boulengeri, T. moorii performed significantly better in its preferred habitat. Despite an experimental duration of several months, we did not find a shift in the morphology of the lower pharyngeal jaw bone that would be indicative of adaptive phenotypic plasticity in this trait.