Date of Award
Fall 12-2018
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.S.
Degree Program
Biological Sciences
Department
Biological Sciences
Major Professor
Howard, Jerome
Second Advisor
Lailvaux, Simon
Third Advisor
Atallah, Joel
Abstract
Phenotypic plasticity is favored in heterogeneous environments in which alternative phenotypes can exploit alternative resources. However, it’s not clear whether phenotypic plasticity is useful in environments that become more homogenous over an organism’s life cycle. I studied a population of grasshopper Melanoplus differentialis that experiences high resource diversity as nymphs but low resource diversity as adults to determine if individuals can undergo diet-induced morphological plasticity in head shape to increase biting ability and ingestion of hard diets. Insects on a soft diet were larger and had greater bite force than those on a hard diet. Head structures related to chewing ability changed shape with mass, heads became taller and narrower. Scaling relationships among body parts suggested that there wasn’t evidence for tradeoff in allocation to chewing vs. locomotor performance. Results are consistent with the idea that essential adult feeding morphology constrains the advantage of plasticity in feeding structures among nymphs.
Recommended Citation
Culotta, Austin M., "A Change in Grain? Diet Induced Plasticity in the Generalist Grasshopper Melanoplus differentialis" (2018). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 2551.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/2551
Included in
Entomology Commons, Evolution Commons, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Population Biology Commons
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.