DAVID MALAKOFF’S ARTICLE “U.S. ASKED TO act immediately to protect deep-sea corals” (News of the Week, 2 April, p. 31), reporting on a petition to the U.S. government by the advocacy group Oceana, suggests that fish species found among deep-water corals are under threat unless this habitat is protected. Most would agree that the destruction of habitats that are several thousands of years old is...

Morphology-based identification of North Atlantic Sebastes has long been controversial and misidentification may produce misleading data, with cascading consequences that negatively affect fisheries management and seafood labelling. North Atlantic Sebastes comprises of four species, commonly known as 'redfish', but little is known about the number, identity and labelling accuracy of redfish spe...

Body size is an important correlate of life history, ecology and distribution of species. Despite this, very little is known about body size evolution in fishes, particularly freshwater fishes of the Neotropics where species and body size diversity are relatively high. Phylogenetic history and body size data were used to explore body size frequency distributions in Neotropical cichlids, a broad...

The relationships between otolith dimensions and fish size for six demersal and two pelagic species were examined and found to be both curvilinear and species-specific. Otolith morphometric observations included length for all species examined and weight, width, volume, cross-sectional area and location of the focal point for selected species. Regression models relating each otolith morphometri...

We examined growth of recently settled juvenile red drum in salt marsh, seagrass, oyster reef, and on nonvegetated bottom areas in the Galveston Bay system of Texas (USA). We estimated growth using otolith microstructure from free-ranging fish collected in different habitat types and also measured growth of red drum in experimental enclosures where fish movement was restricted. Otolith growth w...

A case of Oligodon ocellatus eating a toxic adult toad, Duttaphrynus melanostictus , in Cat Tien National Park, southern Vietnam, is provided. We found kukri snake having buried its head deeply into the abdomen toad and probably being process organs. Subsequently, was swallowed whole moved away disappeared with toad’s hind feet still visible from mouth. It hypothesised that behaviour eviscerati...

Many animals move within ground composed of granular media (GM); the resistive properties of such substrates can depend on water content and compaction, but little is known about how such parameters affect locomotion or the physics of drag and penetration. Using apparatus to control compaction of GM, our recent studies of movement in dry GM have revealed locomotion strategies of specialized dry...

Vertical divergence in marine organisms is being increasingly documented, yet much remains to be carried out to understand the role of depth in the context of phylogeographic reconstruction and the identification of management units. An ideal study system to address this issue is the beaked redfish, Sebastes mentella - one of four species of 'redfish' occurring in the North Atlantic - which is ...

The QM-like gene encodes a ribosomal protein L10. Besides housekeeping roles in protein synthesis, QM-like proteins have multiple extraribosomal functions during cell growth, cell differentiation and apoptosis. We obtained the full-length cDNA of QM-like protein (designated as SoQM) from the salt water game fish Sciaenops ocellatus, using RACE-PCR. The sequence consists of 740 bp, encoding 215-...