the role of thermal niche selection in maintenance of a colour polymorphism in redback salamanders (plethodon cinereus)热的角色色彩多态性的利基选择维护本国蝾螈(plethodon cinereus).pdfVIP

Frontiers in Zoology BioMed Central Research Open Access The role of thermal niche selection in maintenance of a colour polymorphism in redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) Erin E Petruzzi, Peter H Niewiarowski and Francisco B-G Moore* Address: Department of Biology, University of Akron, Akron, OH 44325-3908, USA Email: Erin E Petruzzi - eep4@; Peter H Niewiarowski - phn@; Francisco B-G Moore* - moore@ * Corresponding author Published: 05 July 2006 Received: 27 February 2006 Accepted: 05 July 2006 Frontiers in Zoology 2006, 3:10 doi:10.1186/1742-9994-3-10 This article is available from: /content/3/1/10 © 2006 Petruzzi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Background: In eastern North America two common colour morphs exist in most populations of redback salamanders (Plethodon cinereus). Previous studies have indicated that the different morphs may be adapted to different thermal niches and the morphological variation has been linked to standard metabolic rate at 15°C in one population of P. cinereus. It has therefore been hypothesized that a correlated response to selection on metabolic rate across thermal niches maintains the colour polymorphism