Reef Fish Evolution Driven by Biting
Published:14 Aug.2022 Source:University of California – Davis
Coral reefs are home to a spectacular variety of fish. A new study by biologists at the University of California, Davis shows that much of this diversity is driven by a relatively recent innovation among bony fish -- feeding by biting prey from surfaces. The work is published the week of July 25 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Although jawed fish appear in the fossil record almost 500 million years ago, feeding by grazing, nibbling or gnawing food off rocks and corals didn't appear among the teleosts (the group that includes most bony fish) until after the dinosaur-killing mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous period, about 60 million years ago, according to the new study.