Grasshopper mandibles and the niche variation hypothesis.

Abstract

A test of the hypothesis that phenotypic variation within populations is correlated with niche width is made in an attempt to assess the importance of environmental grain to the evolution of niche width in sexual species. Patterns of mandibular morphology in species of Acrididae are compared to independently derived estimates of trophic niche width. No support for the niche variation hypothesis (or its corollary, the niche polymorphism hypothesis) is found in the variability of single populations of grasshoppers. -from Author