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First published online August 3, 2006
Journal of Experimental Biology 209, 3164-3169 (2006)
Published by The Company of Biologists 2006
doi: 10.1242/jeb.02366

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The energetic consequences of dietary specialization in populations of the garter snake, Thamnophis elegans

E. J. Britt^*, J. W. Hicks and A. F. Bennett

Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697, USA

^* Author for correspondence (e-mail: ebritt{at}uci.edu)

Accepted 5 June 2006

We investigated the intraspecific variation in digestive energetics between dietary specialist and generalist populations of the Western Terrestrial garter snake (Thamnophis elegans) in northern California. Coastal populations have a specialized diet of slugs and inland populations have a generalized diet of fish, anurans, mice and leeches. The difference in prey preference between the two populations is congenital, heritable and ontogenetically stable. To examine energetic specializations and trade-offs in these populations, we measured the net assimilation efficiency of each snake population on both slug (Ariolimax columbianus) and fish (Rhinichthys osculus) diets. The net assimilation efficiency was measured during digestion of a meal and continued until metabolic rate re-attained prefeeding levels. Coastal snakes were able to utilize 62% more of the ingested energy towards production from slug diets through both increased assimilation of nutrients and reduced digestive costs. For fish, assimilation and digestive costs were the same in both coastal and inland populations. These results support the hypothesis that snakes with specialized diets can evolve physiological traits to extract nutrients more efficiently. However, there was no apparent trade-off on the more generalized diet that was associated with this specialization.

Key words: Thamnophis, dietary specialization, digestive energetics, assimilation efficiency, SDA, banana slug