Convergent evolution of extreme snout elongation in deep-sea fishes reveals constrained trajectories

Phenotypic extremes are scattered across the Tree of Life, suggesting that evolutionary constraints often limit their emergence. Yet striking departures from standard body plans, such as elongate snouts, have evolved convergently across deep time. We investigate extreme morphologies in two distantly related deep-sea fish clades: spikefishes (pufferfish relatives) and snipefishes (seahorse…

biorxiv.org ·1d ago

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