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BioMed Central, BMC Biology, 1(11), 2013

DOI: 10.1186/1741-7007-11-5

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Trade-offs in cavefish sensory capacity

Journal article published in 2013 by Helen Gunter, Axel Meyer
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.
This paper is made freely available by the publisher.

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Abstract

In caves one repeatedly finds strikingly convergent patterns of evolution in diverse sets of organisms involving 'regressive' traits such as the loss of eyes and pigmentation. Ongoing debate centers around whether these regressive traits arise as the result of neutral evolutionary processes, or rather by natural selection of 'constructive' traits that arise at the expense of eyes and pigmentation. Recent research on cavefish points to the latter, suggesting that the 'constructive' trait vibrational attractive behavior and the reduction of eye size may share a common genetic basis.