Benjamin Carlson
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Alison Davis Rabosky
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology / LSA
Program:
Authors: Benjamin Carlson, Natasha Stepanova, Hayley Crowell, Michael Hogan, Ramon Nagesan, Alison Davis Rabosky
Session: Session 1: 9:00 am – 9:50 am
Poster: 38
Abstract
In order to survive in many different habitats, organisms evolve sensory organs of all different shapes and sizes that allow them to maintain a keen sense of their environment. In particular, squamate reptiles have evolved the ability to sense chemicals in the air by flicking their tongues and delivering the collected chemicals to the vomeronasal organ that sits on the roof of their mouths. Many squamates—including snakes—have forked tongues, possibly serving to improve the reptiles’ ability to detect the origin of the chemicals they collect. For this project, we investigated how the forks of snake tongues vary between arid deserts and humid rainforests. Differences in the tongue forks of the two groups would indicate sensory innovation of the snakes based on their environments, as a fork of a particular morphology may be more advantageous in arid environments, whereas a fork of a different morphology might be more advantageous in humid environments. We predicted that desert snakes would have longer forks than snakes living in tropical environments because less humid air likely carries less particles, so desert snakes may require a more forked tongue in order to improve detection of particles. We segmented the tongues of snakes living in desert and rainforest environments from 3D models of CT (computed-tomography) scans of samples from each environment. Then, we compared the modeled tongues of the two groups in order to find any differences that may exist regarding the morphology of the tongues’ forks. The preliminary results indicate that there are significant differences in the morphology of the tongue’s fork between desert and rainforest snakes. The findings of this research will lead to a greater understanding of how snakes use their forked tongues. Our results will give insight into how habitats with different climates can contribute to the evolution of sensory organs.
