Graduation Semester and Year
2021
Language
English
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Quantitative Biology
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Eric N Smith
Abstract
Elapidae is an extremely diverse family of venomous snake that have a nearly global distribution. To conquer such wide swaths of territory the initially fossorial snakes evolved many successful strategies pertaining to reproduction, locomotion, and predation techniques. Here I explore the multiple transitions of terrestrial to aquatic life through a high-density 3D geometric morphometric methodology conducted upon five large datasets of computed tomography (CT) data. This occurs primarily through the comparison of the genus of New World coralsnakes, Micrurus, with sea snakes of Hydrophis and Laticauda and is informed by a scale created to document and classify the disparate life history of elapids. My dissertation elucidates the morphological characters that are associated with an aquatic lifestyle and represent possibly undescribed biodiversity found within Elapidae. The CT data created for this dissertation is expected to significantly benefit future efforts into morphological analyses of the Elapidae.
Keywords
Morphology, Computed tomography, Elapids, Coralsnakes, Micrurus, Geometric morphometrics
Disciplines
Biology | Life Sciences
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Jacobs, Justin Lawrence, "Learning to Swim: An Exploration of the Terrestrial to Aquatic Transition in Elapids (Squamata: Elapidae)" (2021). Biology Dissertations. 201.
https://mavmatrix.uta.edu/biology_dissertations/201
Comments
Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington