Code
3E006807
Duration
01 October 2007 → 30 September 2013
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund, Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Promotor
Fellow
Research disciplines
-
Natural sciences
- Animal biology
- Evolutionary biology
- Genetics
-
Agricultural and food sciences
- Veterinary medicine
Keywords
South American catfishes
algae scraping
trophic adaptations
Project description
In this project the evolution towards a highly specialised feeding apparatus, i.e. that for algae scraping by means of a sucker mouth, will be studied. Such a high level of specialized feeding has only been observed in tadpoles and tropical catfishes. With a multidisciplinary appraoch, this projects objectives are to study the ontogeny, function and evolution of such an algae scraping apparatus in three families of traopical catfishes.