Our overarching objective with this research is to bridge the fundamental gap between ecological and evolutionary timescales by testing hypotheses of ecological speciation in fossils. To do this, we further developed our method of fish tooth microwear analysis so that it can be used to determine trophic niche and dietary preferences in extant and fossil fishes. The hypothesis that underpins this research, and which we tested rigorously, is that tooth microwear in living fishes covaries with trophic niche, and that trophic niche can be determined from an analysis of tooth microwear. Our specific objectives are to test this hypothesis through a series of interlinked studies:

i) Tooth microwear in living three-spine sticklebacks – to determine the relationship between tooth microwear and trophic ecology;

ii) Tooth microwear in fossil three-spine sticklebacks – combining microwear data with ongoing morphometric studies of Miocene sticklebacks to test the hypothesis that morphological change in fossil sticklebacks was driven by niche differentiation and character displacement;

iii) Tooth microwear in living perch - to determine the relationship between tooth microwear and trophic ecology in a polymorphic species pair and test the hypothesis that tooth microwear patterns can be compared across a range of fish taxa;

iv) Exploratory analysis of tooth microwear in living bowfin - to investigate the relationship between tooth microwear and feeding in non-teleost actinopterygian, and evaluate the possibility of testing hypotheses of ecological speciation in fossil semionotid species flocks from the Mesozoic great lakes of eastern North America.

We will also continue to test and develop our methodology, including assessment of the potential impact of tooth replacement on microwear, and determination of how quickly microwear patterns characteristic of particular trophic ecologies appear.