The European river lamprey came to the Upper Volga from Baltic Sea most probably via a system of shipways developed in 18th and 19th centuries. Vyshnii Volochek, Tikhvin, Mariinskaya water systems are possible invasion pathways for this species. Dispersal colonization Caspian Basin was likely combination upstream downstream migrations. Analysis museum our own samples showed that possibly migrat...

the pollution of aquatic ecosystems may affect natural reproduction of fish populations by decreasing the fertilization efficiency. among the various sources of pollution, heavy metals are important group, being found in both freshwater and marine environment. the present study investigated changes of sperm characteristics of caspimyzon wagneri when exposed to manganese (mn). spermatozoids were...

The recently cloned lamprey GnRH receptor was shown to have several unique features, including the longest intracellular C-terminal tail (120 amino acids (aa)) of any previously described GnRH receptor. In the current study, a series of experiments were performed examining cAMP responses, binding kinetics, whole cell competitive binding assays and internalization studies of the lamprey GnRH rec...

Russian ( ), Persian ( ) and Siberian ( Acipenser gueldenstaedtii A. persicus A. ) sturgeons are closely related ‘Ponto-Caspian’ species. Investigation of baerii their population structure is an important problem, the solution of which determines measures for conservation of these species. According to previous studies, ‘baerii-like’ mitochondrial genotypes were found in the Caspian Sea among 3...

Hypoxic vasoconstriction (HV) is an intrinsic response of mammalian pulmonary and cyclostome aortic vascular smooth muscle. The present study examined the utilization of calcium during HV in dorsal aortas (DA) from sea lamprey and New Zealand hagfish. HV was temporally correlated with increased free cytosolic calcium (Ca2+c) in lamprey DA. Extracellular calcium (Ca2+o) did not contribute signif...

Current taxonomy of western Eurasian trout leaves a number of questions open; it is not clear to what extent some species are distinct genetically and morphologically. The purpose of this paper was to explore phylogeography and species boundaries in freshwater and anadromous trout from the drainages of the Black and the Caspian Seas (Ponto-Caspian). We studied morphology and mitochondrial phylo...

...........................................................................................................................................1 Table of