Chlamydial infections of fish are emerging as an important cause of disease in new and established aquaculture industries. To date, epitheliocystis, a skin and gill disease associated with infection by these obligate intracellular pathogens, has been described in over 90 fish species, including hosts from marine and fresh water environments. Aided by advances in molecular detection and typing, ...

In late 2006 an unusual ulcerative condition in wild fish was reported for the first time in Africa from the Chobe and upper Zambezi Rivers in Botswana and Namibia. Concern increased with subsistence fishermen reporting large numbers of ulcerated fish in their catches. In April 2007 the condition was confirmed as an outbreak of epizootic ulcerative syndrome (EUS). The causative agent, Aphan...

In Poland the conservation program of Atlantic sturgeon Acipenser oxyrinchus is conducted during over 10 years by Inland Fisheries Institute in Olsztyn, Poland. Material of A. oxyrinchus is annually transported from Canada to Poland and the broodstock of this species is created. Part of imported fish material is breed and released into local rivers e.g. Drweca River, Vistula River. All the impo...

The Tonle Sap Lake (TSL) is a flood-pulse system. It is the largest natural lake in South-East Asia and constitutes one of the largest fisheries over the world, supporting the livelihood of million peoples. Nonetheless, the Mekong River Basin is changing rapidly due to accelerating water infrastructure development (hydropower, irrigation, flood control, and water supply) and climate change, bri...

Bream (Abramis brama orientalis) is one of the most commercially valuable fish in the Caspian Sea. The aim of this study was to compare levels of genetic polymorphism between wild and farmed Bream populations using seven microsatellite loci. Genetic diversity was investigated by studying samples collected from two regions; Chaboksar and the Artificial Propagation Center of Guilan province. Alle...

Nujiang River (NR), an essential component of the biodiversity hotspot of the Mountains of Southwest China, possesses a characteristic fish fauna and contains endemic species. Although previous studies on fish diversity in the NR have primarily consisted of listings of the fish species observed during field collections, in our study, we DNA-barcoded 1139 specimens belonging to 46 morphologicall...

Fish assemblage was investigated during the study of longitudinal profile of the Ehania River Basin in south-eastern Côte d’Ivoire. This area is subjected to intense human activities with many plantations (palm tree, banana, pineapple, coffee, rubber and cocoa). Samples were collected, with gillnets of different mesh sizes, through 6 sampling surveys during dry and rainy seasons from February 2...

The fossils assigned to the tetrapod stem group document the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates from lobe-finned fishes. During the past 15 years the phylogenetic structure of this stem group has remained remarkably stable, even when accommodating major new discoveries such as the elpistostegid Tiktaalik. Here we present a large tetrapodomorph fish from the Late Devonian of China that disrupt...

Morphological diversity is routinely used to infer ecological variation among species because differences in form underlie variation in functional performance of ecological tasks like capturing prey, avoiding predators, or defending territories. However, many functions have complex morphological bases that can weaken associations between morphological and functional diversification. We investig...

Vertebrate carcasses provide an episodic but highly important food source for benthic organisms, particularly at depths beyond the zones of primary productivity (Lalli and Parsons 2001). Such carcasses have recently become of interest due to increasing discards in fisheries as this may shift benthic community structure (Collins et al. 1999). Species such as ratfish and benthic sharks as well as...