Understanding the dietary preferences of endangered species can be useful in implementing conservation strategies, including habitat restoration, translocation, and captive breeding. Environmental DNA (eDNA) from feces provides a non-invasive method for analysing animal diets. Currently, metabarcoding, PCR-based approach, is choice such data. However, this has limitations, specifically PCR bias...

This paper presents a fish inventory of the Jordanian Gulf of Aqaba. Fish sampling was conducted by means of different fishing gears, monitoring of local fish market and visual census technique. A total of 507 fish species belonging to 109 families with an average of 4.7 species per family; 18 Chondrichthyes and 489 Ostichthyes. The largest families are as follows (number of species in parenthe...

At least 100 fish species are known to be present in the intertidal areas (estuaries, mudflats and salt marshes) of Mont Saint-Michel Bay. These and other comparable shallow marine coastal waters, such as estuaries and lagoons, play a nursery role for many fish species. However, in Europe little attention has been paid to the value of tidal salt marshes for fishes. Between March 1996 and April ...

Trade-offs between brood size and offspring size, offspring survival, parental condition or parental survival are classic assumptions in life history biology. A reduction in brood size may lessen these costs of care, but offspring mortality can also result in an energetic gain, if parents are able to utilize the nutrients from the demised young. Males of the broad-nosed pipefish (Syngnathus typ...

The brain is one of the most energetically expensive organs in the vertebrate body. Consequently, the high cost of brain development and maintenance is predicted to constrain adaptive brain size evolution (the expensive tissue hypothesis, ETH). Here, we test the ETH in a teleost fish with predominant female mating competition (reversed sex roles) and male pregnancy, the pacific seaweed pipefish...

Size-assortative mating is a nonrandom association of body size between members of mating pairs and is expected to be common in species with mutual preferences for body size. In this study, we investigated whether there is direct evidence for size-assortative mating in two species of pipefishes, Syngnathus floridae and S. typhle, that share the characteristics of male pregnancy, sex-role revers...

21 The long snout of pipefishes and seahorses (Syngnathidae, Gasterosteiformes) is formed as an 22 elongation of the ethmoid region. This is in contrast to many other teleosts with elongate 23 snouts (e.g. Butterflyfishes) in which the snout is formed as an extension of the jaws. 24 Syngnathid fishes perform very fast suction feeding, accomplished by powerful neurocranial 25 elevation and hyoid...

Trans-generational plasticity (TGP) is the adjustment of phenotypes to changing habitat conditions that persist longer than the individual lifetime. Fitness benefits (adaptive TGP) are expected upon matching parent-offspring environments. In a global change scenario, several performance-related environmental factors are changing simultaneously. This lowers the predictability of offspring enviro...

In complement to the JDS4 traditional fish survey (TFS, mainly by electrofishing), a eDNA metabarcoding-based has been implemented within framework of monitoring program organized DNAqua-Net and in collaboration with INTERREG "MEASURES" program. Water samples were collected at 29 sites from source mouth Danube River, 18 tributaries. Two water (mean volume L per sample) each site filtered situ. ...