Transitions from Water to Land: Terrestrial Feeding in Fishes

Abstract

Several species of fish live at the interface between water and land, and have evolved ways to cope with the problems of an ancestrally aquatic feeding system that needs to function on land. Studies of the kinematics of terrestrial feeding by these amphibious fishes allow us to identify the mechanical challenges and solutions to successfully make this environmental transition. In turn, this can help us to generate hypotheses on the evolutionary history of early tetrapods related to their transition to terrestrial feeding. In this chapter, an overview is given of the results of studies that have analyzed the kinematics of terrestrial feeding in four amphibious fishes. These studies showed how these fishes establish and maintain a stable body posture to allow the capture of food in the terrestrial environment, how their jaws grab the ground-based food, and how this food is transported to the back of the mouth cavity. Finally, in the light of these findings, an overview is provided of the current hypotheses on how terrestrial feeding could have evolved in early tetrapods.