Our findings suggest that having the potential to produce plastic responses may incur oxidative and immunological costs.

Higher antioxidant activity in highly plastic sibships suggests that maintenance of phenotypic plasticity may be linked to energy demanding metabolic processes. The degree of plasticity was also associated with higher lipid peroxidation and slightly greater granulocyte-to-lymphocyte ratio. We observed that more plastic sibships experienced higher antioxidant enzymatic activity when reared in the absence of predator cues, i.e. We observed marked differences across sibships in developmental, growth and morphological responses to predators, and tested whether increased plasticity was associated with oxidative stress or immune suppression. Here we experimentally examine physiological differences across genotypes (sibships) of spadefoot toad larvae with different degrees of plasticity in response to predator cues. Despite recurrent arguments invoking putative metabolic costs associated with maintenance of cellular machinery, no studies have yet attempted to quantify it from a molecular standpoint. Theoretical models have argued that costs of maintaining the sensory and response machinery necessary for adaptive phenotypic plasticity are important determinants to the evolution of plasticity. Phenotypic plasticity allows organisms to improve the match between their phenotype and heterogeneous environments. We encourage the development of analogous indices that apply the methods of geometric morphometrics to distinguish between other species whose identification is complicated. The use of these geometric morphometric methods allowed the detection of differences in shape between these two species and to develop an easy-to-use identification index. gallina, whereas greater PI values were attributed to C. Thus, an index was developed (PI: Pallial Index = pallial sinus length/shell length), which was successfully used to separate the species (with 100% correct classification), i.e., specimens with PI lower than 0.119 belonged to C. Generalized procrustes superimposition (landmark analysis) showed that the main differences between species reside in the length of the pallial sinus. The umbo was more 'sharp' and the lunula less pronounced in C. Contour analysis revealed differences primarily in the shell umbo and lunular area.

Geometric morphometric methods provided shape variables that led to 0-6% misclassification rates between species linear morphometric measures led to 16.8% error. However, because there was a considerable overlap in the data sets, the species could not be distinguished using any combination of those linear measurements. height, width, and total weight were significantly different between species. striatula from Portuguese coastal waters were studied through conventional linear and geometric morphometric analysis, using both contour (elliptic Fourier analysis) and landmark-based methods. striatula (Bivalvia: Veneridae) are difficult to distinguish by inexperienced observers and the taxonomy of these species is still an issue of discussion. The commercially fished striped venus clams Chamelea gallina and C.

Marta animal come gallinas