A new genus and species of pycnodontiform fishes, Grimmenodon aureum, from marginal marine, marine-brackish lower Toarcian (Harpoceras exaratum ammonite subzone) clay deposits of Grimmen in northeastern Germany is described. The single specimen represents a diagnostic left prearticular dentition characterized by unique tooth arrangement and ornamentation patterns. Grimmenodon aureum, gen. et sp...

Delineating regions is an important first step in understanding the evolution and biogeography of faunas. However, quantitative approaches are often limited at a global scale, particularly in the marine realm. Reef fishes are the most diversified group of marine fishes, and compared to most other phyla, their taxonomy and geographical distributions are relatively well known. Based on 169 checkl...

*Corresponding author: Ayyaru Gopalakrishnan, Centre of Advanced Study in Marine Biology, Faculty of Marine, Sciences, Annamalai University, Parangipettai608502, Tamil Nadu, India. Tel: +91-4144-243388, +91-9443537538 Fax: +91-4144-24388 E-mail: [email protected] Foundation Project: Supported by the Ministry of Environment and Forest, Government of India, New Delhi. The project titled “Preval...

Ichthyologists, natural-history artists, and tropical-fish aquarists have described, illustrated, or photographed colour patterns in adult marine fishes for centuries, but colour patterns in marine fish larvae have largely been neglected. Yet the pelagic larval stages of many marine fishes exhibit subtle to striking, ephemeral patterns of chromatophores that warrant investigation into their pot...

Evolutionary innovations, traits that give species access to previously unoccupied niches, may promote speciation and adaptive radiation. Here, we show that such innovations can also result in competitive inferiority and extinction. We present evidence that the modified pharyngeal jaws of cichlid fishes and several marine fish lineages, a classic example of evolutionary innovation, are not univ...

These impacts of fisheries have led, in the late 1990s, to a growing interest in "ecosystembased management" (see e.g. NRC, 1999). Moreover, though the full implications of such form of management continue to remain elusive, there is a growing understanding that ecosystembased management must consider and maintain the structuring role of large predators in marine food webs. The demonstration by...

Neither the scale of adaptive variation nor the genetic basis for differential population responses to the environment is known for broadcast-spawning marine fishes. Using a common-garden experimental protocol, we document how larval growth, survival and their norms of reaction differ genetically among four populations of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). These traits, and their plastic responses to...

Although coral reefs support the largest concentrations of marine biodiversity worldwide, the extent to which the global system of marine-protected areas (MPAs) represents individual species and the breadth of evolutionary history across the Tree of Life has never been quantified. Here we show that only 5.7% of scleractinian coral species and 21.7% of labrid fish species reach the minimum prote...

In light of ocean warming and loss of Arctic sea ice, harvested marine fishes of boreal origin (and their fisheries) move poleward into yet unexploited parts of the Arctic seas. Industrial fisheries, already in place on many Arctic shelves, will radically affect the local fish species as they turn up as unprecedented bycatch. Arctic marine fishes are indispensable to ecosystem structuring and f...

Based on life history and ecological characteristics, several authors have placed seamount fishes at the extreme end of the vulnerability spectrum. However, it was still unclear if there is justification for the generalization that seamount fishes overall possess specific life-history characteristics that render them more vulnerable to fishing than other species. In this contribution, we test t...