The animals in the video above are marine copepods, Tigriopus californicus,- tiny crustaceans that live in intertidal rock pools along the Pacific coast of North America. And like Hutchinson empasized in his 1951 essay, I am studying aspects of their physiology that are analogous to vertebrates to answer questions about the evolution of honest signaling from carotenoid coloration. Namely, the metabolic transformation of yellow dietary carotenoids to red ketocarotenoids used for coloration. 

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rjweavercarotenoids