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Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland

Predator-prey interactions are thought to play a driving role in animal evolution, especially for groups that have developed venom as their predatory strategy. However, how the diet of venomous animals influences the composition of venom arsenals remains uncertain. Two prevailing hypotheses to expla...

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Autores principales: Gorson, Juliette, Fassio, Giulia, Lau, Emily S., Holford, Mandë
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7912948/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33540609
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020108
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author Gorson, Juliette
Fassio, Giulia
Lau, Emily S.
Holford, Mandë
author_facet Gorson, Juliette
Fassio, Giulia
Lau, Emily S.
Holford, Mandë
author_sort Gorson, Juliette
collection PubMed
description Predator-prey interactions are thought to play a driving role in animal evolution, especially for groups that have developed venom as their predatory strategy. However, how the diet of venomous animals influences the composition of venom arsenals remains uncertain. Two prevailing hypotheses to explain the relationship between diet and venom composition focus on prey preference and the types of compounds in venom, and a positive correlation between dietary breadth and the number of compounds in venom. Here, we examined venom complexity, phylogenetic relationship, collection depth, and biogeography of the Terebridae (auger snails) to determine if repeated innovations in terebrid foregut anatomy and venom composition correspond to diet variation. We performed the first molecular study of the diet of terebrid marine snails by metabarcoding the gut content of 71 terebrid specimens from 17 species. Our results suggest that the presence or absence of a venom gland is strongly correlated with dietary breadth. Specifically, terebrid species without a venom gland displayed greater diversity in their diet. Additionally, we propose a revision of the definition of venom complexity in conoidean snails to more accurately capture the breadth of ecological influences. These findings suggest that prey diet is an important factor in terebrid venom evolution and diversification and further investigations of other understudied organisms, like terebrids, are needed to develop robust hypotheses in this area.
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spelling pubmed-79129482021-02-28 Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland Gorson, Juliette Fassio, Giulia Lau, Emily S. Holford, Mandë Toxins (Basel) Article Predator-prey interactions are thought to play a driving role in animal evolution, especially for groups that have developed venom as their predatory strategy. However, how the diet of venomous animals influences the composition of venom arsenals remains uncertain. Two prevailing hypotheses to explain the relationship between diet and venom composition focus on prey preference and the types of compounds in venom, and a positive correlation between dietary breadth and the number of compounds in venom. Here, we examined venom complexity, phylogenetic relationship, collection depth, and biogeography of the Terebridae (auger snails) to determine if repeated innovations in terebrid foregut anatomy and venom composition correspond to diet variation. We performed the first molecular study of the diet of terebrid marine snails by metabarcoding the gut content of 71 terebrid specimens from 17 species. Our results suggest that the presence or absence of a venom gland is strongly correlated with dietary breadth. Specifically, terebrid species without a venom gland displayed greater diversity in their diet. Additionally, we propose a revision of the definition of venom complexity in conoidean snails to more accurately capture the breadth of ecological influences. These findings suggest that prey diet is an important factor in terebrid venom evolution and diversification and further investigations of other understudied organisms, like terebrids, are needed to develop robust hypotheses in this area. MDPI 2021-02-02 /pmc/articles/PMC7912948/ /pubmed/33540609 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020108 Text en © 2021 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Gorson, Juliette
Fassio, Giulia
Lau, Emily S.
Holford, Mandë
Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title_full Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title_fullStr Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title_full_unstemmed Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title_short Diet Diversity in Carnivorous Terebrid Snails Is Tied to the Presence and Absence of a Venom Gland
title_sort diet diversity in carnivorous terebrid snails is tied to the presence and absence of a venom gland
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7912948/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33540609
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/toxins13020108
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