The Carlson Lab

Why Forcipiger.net?

Well, it's quite simple really. You see, everything--that is everything about my research program--can be traced back to those two very yellow species in the butterflyfish genus Forcipiger, F. flavissimus (left) and F. longirostris; the same two species called lau wiliwili nukunuku 'oi'oi by the Native Hawaiians because they are the fishes "shaped like the leaf of the wiliwili tree [lau wiliwili was used by the Hawaiians to refer to several species of butterflyfishes] with the best noses"!

Back in the day (i.e. high school), my naive self couldn't even begin to conceive of how two species of fishes that look so similar in external morphology (color pattern, size, shape), could ever coexist. But they do and in fact, they do so in many parts of the Indo-Pacific (including the waters around Oahu, HI, where I was living at the time).

By reading through the primary literature and an awesome (but still unpublished Ph.D. thesis), I learned that external similarity does not always mean similarity in trophic morphology. In fact, I found that the two species of Forcipiger differ subtlely in jaw length, gape width, and dentition and that these morphological differences are strongly correlated with differences in feeding behavior (biting versus suction feeding) and prey type (small pieces of invertebrates versus whole (tiny!) invertebrates). And there it was, that fundamental and ever-inspiring chain: morphology--> function--> performance--> ecology. So, here, I pay homage to those little guys and their awesome jaws...