In Lake Nabugabo, Uganda, a satellite of Lake Victoria, approximately 50% of the indigenous fishes disappeared from the open waters subsequent to the establishment of the introduced predatory Nile perch, Lates niloticus. This pattern is similar to the faunal loss experienced in the much larger Lake Victoria. Several of these species persisted in wetland refugia (e.g. ecotonal wetlands, swamp la...

Knowledge of evolutionary relationships or phylogeny allows for effective predictions about the unstudied characteristics of species. These include the presence and biological activity of an organism's venoms. To date, most venom bioprospecting has focused on snakes, resulting in six stroke and cancer treatment drugs that are nearing U.S. Food and Drug Administration review. Fishes, however, wi...

Several recent studies have shown that some larval fishes will approach underwater speakers that broadcast reef noise, leading to the hypothesis that larval fishes use acoustic cues to locate reefs for settlement. The purpose of the present study was to examine existing hearing data of fishes in relation to ambient sound levels around reefs to estimate the distance over which reef fish might de...

Tropical oceanic fishes, such as tunas, billfishes, and sharks, live together in the same environment – the pelagic open ocean. In situ experiments have been developed to observe horizontal and vertical movements of individuals of different pelagic species, but the fact that these species share the same environment has not been studied yet. In this paper we propose a minimal model in which the ...

Cytological and organismal characteristics associated with cellular DNA content underpin most adaptionist interpretations of genome size variation. Since fishes are the only group of vertebrate for which relationships between genome size and key cellular parameters are uncertain, the cytological correlates of genome size were examined in this group. The cell and nuclear areas of erythrocytes sh...

Piscivorous predators can experience multi-fold differences in energy intake rates based solely on the types of fishes consumed. We estimated energy density of 1151 fish from 39 species by proximate analysis of lipid, water, ash-free lean dry matter, and ash contents and evaluated factors contributing to variation in composition. Lipid content was the primary determinant of energy density, rang...

Cryptobenthic fishes have a significant influence on coral reef ecosystem dynamics; however, they have received considerably less attention than their larger, more conspicuous fish counterparts. In nearby seagrass zones, there is little or no information about cryptobenthic fishes, even for basic parameters such as density and distribution, although smaller organisms may have a substantial effe...

The fates of 5,975 feces produced by 88 species of reef fishes were monitored at Palau (western Pacific Ocean). At least 4 5 fishes ate fish feces in addition to other foods. Intraspecific coprophagy and autocoprophagy were very rare and most coprophagous interactions were between members of different trophic groups. Fecal material moved through a feeding network of fishes, from carnivores to h...

The weakly electric fish Gnathonemus petersii searches at night for insect larvae in tropical African streams. The aim of this study was to determine the contributions of different sensory modalities to foraging. The time that fish needed to find two randomly placed chironomid larvae was measured. The influence of various senses on search time was investigated by blocking the use of one or more...