durophagy

English

The pavement teeth of Rhinoptera stingrays are specialised for mechanical durophagy; in their case it is the crushing of the shellfish on which they feed.

Spotted Hyaena jaws and teeth are adapted both to carnivory and to durophagy of bones.

The durophagous teeth of this relative of the piranha are adapted to crushing the hard-shelled seeds of fruit that fall into Amazonian floodwaters.

Etymology

From Latin durus (“hard”) + -phagy.

Noun

durophagy (uncountable)

1. The eating of hard-shelled foods such as bones or nuts, or prey organisms such as shellfish.
   • 2023 Sylvain Marcellini, Melanie Debiais-Thibaud & Frederic Marin (eds) The evolution of biomineralization in metazoans ISBN 978-2-83251-339-2 DOI 10.3389/978-2-83251-339-2 frontiers Research Topics

     Among cartilaginous fishes (Chondrichthyes), the consumption of hard prey (durophagy) is most common in the clade of skates and rays. . . which contain only durophagous taxa . . . Durophagy in batoid fishes takes a variety of forms: diets can involve comparatively thin-shelled crustaceans, thick-shelled molluscs and/or prey with softer, tougher exoskeletons (e.g. shrimp or even insects) . . . Hard prey processing has not been extensively surveyed in batoid fishes, but at least two strategies exist . . .: what we will call "chemical durophagy," where predators rely on low stomach pH or chitinase to break down prey exoskeletons . . . and "mechanical durophagy", where predators crush prey before ingestion . . .

Derived terms

• durophagous