TY - JOUR
T1 - An adaptive explanation for the horse-like shape of seahorses
AU - Van Wassenbergh, Sam
AU - Roos, Gert
AU - Ferry, Lara
N1 - Funding Information:
The University of Antwerp and the FWO-Vl (Grant G 053907) provided financial support. S.V.W. is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the FWO-Vl. Equipment used in this study was purchased via NSF Grant MRI-0320972 to L.F. Todd Pataky helped with Matlab and Simulink modelling. We thank Peter Aerts for critical reading of the manuscript and for comments.
PY - 2011
Y1 - 2011
N2 - The body shape of seahorses resembles the head and neck of horses because of their curved trunk, their ventrally bent head and their long snout. Seahorses evolved from ancestral, pipefish-like species, which have a straight body. Here, we use a biomechanical analysis and show that the seahorse's peculiar head, neck and trunk posture allows for the capture of small shrimps at larger distances from the eyes compared with pipefish. The results from the mathematical modelling were confirmed by kinematic data of prey-capturing syngnathids: compared with straight-bodied pipefish, all seahorse species studied consistently show an additional forward-reaching component in the path travelled by the mouth during their strikes at prey. This increased strike distance enlarges the volume of water they can probe for food, which is especially useful for tail-attached, sit-and-wait predators like seahorses. The biomechanics of prey capture thus provides a putative selective advantage that may explain the bending of the trunk into a horse-like shape.
AB - The body shape of seahorses resembles the head and neck of horses because of their curved trunk, their ventrally bent head and their long snout. Seahorses evolved from ancestral, pipefish-like species, which have a straight body. Here, we use a biomechanical analysis and show that the seahorse's peculiar head, neck and trunk posture allows for the capture of small shrimps at larger distances from the eyes compared with pipefish. The results from the mathematical modelling were confirmed by kinematic data of prey-capturing syngnathids: compared with straight-bodied pipefish, all seahorse species studied consistently show an additional forward-reaching component in the path travelled by the mouth during their strikes at prey. This increased strike distance enlarges the volume of water they can probe for food, which is especially useful for tail-attached, sit-and-wait predators like seahorses. The biomechanics of prey capture thus provides a putative selective advantage that may explain the bending of the trunk into a horse-like shape.
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U2 - 10.1038/ncomms1168
DO - 10.1038/ncomms1168
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:79251542639
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 2
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 164
ER -