AQUATIC PREY TRANSPORT AND THE COMPARATIVE KINEMATICS OF AMBYSTOMA-TIGRINUM FEEDING BEHAVIORS

Four definable feeding behaviors used during the metamorphic life hist ory of tiger salamanders are terrestrial prey capture and transport (a s adults) and aquatic prey capture and transport (as larvae). Previous studies have focused primarily on the first three of these behaviors and thus aquatic prey transport is poorly understood. These studies ha ve indicated that terrestrial prey capture has unique kinematic and mo tor patterns, whereas the other behaviors are quite similar to one ano ther. Using high-speed video analysis, the kinematics of aquatic prey transport in larval Ambystoma tigrinum are described using both latera l and ventral views. These kinematic patterns are statistically compar ed with the kinematic patterns of aquatic prey capture, terrestrial pr ey capture and terrestrial prey transport. Statistical analyses allow us to assess the similarities and differences among the four behaviors and to determine the effect of the metamorphic environmental transiti on (water to land) and morphological changes of the feeding mechanism (suction-to lingual-based) on feeding kinematics. Our data do not supp ort the notion that lingual-based terrestrial prey capture uses unique kinematic patterns compared with the other three behaviors, which con sist of similar movements. Rather, each of the feeding behaviors has u nique kinematic features that distinguish it from the others. In addit ion, variation in tiger salamander feeding kinematics is more a functi on of the feeding event (whether it is capture or transport) than of t he environment in which the feeding takes place or the morphology of t he feeding mechanism. Finally, we encourage the use of parsimony-based methods of phylogenetic analysis to analyze shared traits (such as ki nematic and/or electromyographic variables) in comparative studies of behavior within a single species.