Reproduction on mudflats requires that eggs are protected from different environmental challenges during development and hatch when environmental conditions are favorable for survival of juveniles. Mudskippers are air-breathing, amphibious gobies of the subfamily Oxudercinae, and one of a few vertebrates that reside on mudflats. They excavate burrows in mudflats and deposit eggs in them. Howeve...

The freshwater snakehead Channa asiatica is an obligatory air-breather that resides in slow-flowing streams and in crevices near riverbanks in Southern China. In its natural habitat, it may encounter bouts of aerial exposure during the dry seasons. In the laboratory, the ammonia excretion rate of C. asiatica exposed to terrestrial conditions in a 12 h:12 h dark:light regime was one quarter that...

Moving on land versus in water imposes dramatically different requirements on the musculoskeletal system. Although many limbed vertebrates, such as salamanders and prehistoric tetrapodomorphs, have an axial system specialized for aquatic locomotion and an appendicular system adapted for terrestrial locomotion, diverse extant teleosts use the axial musculoskeletal system (body plus caudal fin) t...

Opegaster ouemoensis sp. n. is described from Periophthalmus argentilineatus Valenciennes (Gobiidae). Distinctive features included the weak or undetectable papillae of the ventral sucker and the small, but distinct cirrus-sac. The new species is compared with 25 marine species of Opegaster for which a table of measurements and ratios is presented. The new combination Opegaster queenslandicus (...

The shape diversity among populations of Scartelaos tenuis (Day 1876) from five stations (194 specimens) in the Persian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz (Qeshm Island), and the Sea of Oman were investigated. The shape variation was assessed by geometric morphometrics, using 14 morphological landmarks. The two sexes were not distinguishable by the shape. Fish samples were classified into two distinct grou...