A new study reveals the diets of reef fish dictate how fast different species evolve. The breakthrough adds another piece to the fascinating evolutionary puzzle of coral reefs and the fishes that live on them.
“Up until now we knew that many factors could have influenced the pace of reef fish evolution, but these factors were never examined altogether,” said Alexandre Siqueira, the study’s lead author from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University (Coral CoE at JCU).
“By building an evolutionary ‘tree of life’ for nearly all fishes associated with reefs, we were able to examine the variation in rates of species formation and ask what drives it,” said co-author Dr Peter Cowman, also from Coral CoE at JCU.
The ‘tree of life’ contains more than 6,000 fish species that live on coral reefs across the globe. Ecological and geographical data—such as diet and geographical range—were also gathered for the majority of these species.
The authors were surprised to find that what really matters in reef fish evolution isn’t geography, but what fish eat and how big they get.
Read more at ARC Centre Of Excellence For Coral Reef Studies
Image: The Steephead parrotfish (Chlorurus microrhinos), seen here at Lizard Island, Australia, is a large vegetarian fish. Image credit: Victor Huertas.