Mariana Fernández Correa
Research Mentor(s): Samuel Borstein
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology
Presentation Date: 08/03/2022
Presentation Type: Poster
Poster Number: 17
Session: Session I: 12:30 – 1:20pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Mariana I. Fernández Correa, Samuel Borstein
Abstract
Although freshwater habitats compose very little of the Earth’s surface, they are home to nearly half the fish species on the planet. One of the hotspots for freshwater biodiversity is the Neotropics. However, how so many fish came to occupy the Neotropics and the general evolutionary dynamics that led to such great biodiversity is still largely unknown. One way Neotropical fishes have diversified is in their habitat use. The family Rivulidae, also known as South American killifish, is comprised of small-bodied fish that live in nearly all Neotropical river basins. They display a great number of different phenotypes related to the demands of swimming in different hydrological conditions. We tested how swimming morphology differs between annual rivulids, which live in small ponds that often dry up with the seasons, and non-annual rivulids, those with longer lifespans that occupy larger, more temporally stable bodies of water. We measured phenotypic traits characterizing swimming performance from specimens of thirty-five Rivulidae species from several museums around the country, including the University of Michigan Museum of Zoology . We used principal component analysis (PCA) to generate a morphospace of swimming functional morphology to assess if annual Rivulidae differed from non-annual Rivulidae . This study highlights how life history has shaped the functional morphology and complex evolutionary history of rivulids and provides insights into the evolution of Neotropical fish diversity.
