Trophic niche divergence of Cultrinae species at phylogenetic
scale
In overall, when all the data pooled together, the 7 Cultrinae species
showed similar niche space, with a lot overlap as well as some
differences (Fig. 7). At the phylogenetic scale, to identify the
possible niche conservatism,
trophic differences were compared
between distantly related species, closely related species and sister
species. It was found that trophic differences between distantly related
species were significantly larger than closely related species
(P =0.02 < 0.05), indicating the possible NC (Fig. 8).
However, while making comparison between sister species and closely
related species, it was found that trophic differences between sister
species were larger than those between closely related species
(excluding sister species) (not statistically significant, P>0.05), indicating non-NC existing here.