Correlation Between Mandibular Morphology and Specific Diet of Some Desert Grassland Acrididae (Orthoptera)
- 1 April 1984
- journal article
- research article
- Published by JSTOR in The American Midland Naturalist
- Vol. 111 (2) , 296-303
- https://doi.org/10.2307/2425324
Abstract
A morphometric analysis of mandibular variation among desert grassland Acrididae was conducted to assess the quantitative correspondence between morphology and specific diet. Mandibles of forbivorous, mixed-feeding and graminivorous species differ in shape and in the arrangement of dentes, the differences in shape being evident in mandibular ratios. Mandibular ratios were significantly related to the proportion of the diet comprised of C3 plants or (equivalently, in this case) forbs by rank correlation analysis. Phylogenetic constraints appear to be responsible for the single exception to this relationship.This publication has 1 reference indexed in Scilit:
- Food Selection by GrasshoppersAnnual Review of Entomology, 1967