Hypersalinity drives physiological and morphological changes in Limia perugiae (Poeciliidae)

Abstract

A fundamental question in biology is how an organism's morphology and physiology are shaped by its environment. Here, we evaluate the effects of a hypersaline environment on the morphology and physiology of a population of livebearing fish in the genus Limia (Poeciliidae). We sampled from two populations of Limia perugiae (one freshwater and one hypersaline) in the southwest Dominican Republic. We evaluated relative abundance of osmoregulatory proteins using western blot analyses and used a geometric morphometric approach to evaluate fine-scale changes to size and shape.