A broad phylogenetic review of fins, limbs, and girdles throughout the stem and base of the crown group is needed to get a comprehensive idea of transformations unique to the assembly of the tetrapod limb ground plan. In the lower part of the tetrapod stem, character state changes at the pectoral level dominate; comparable pelvic level data are limited. In more crownward taxa, pelvic level chan...

The earliest tetrapod limbs are polydactylous, morphologically varied and do not conform to an archetypal pattern. These discoveries, combined with the unravelling of limb developmental morphogenetic and regulatory mechanisms, have prompted a re-examination of vertebrate limb evolution. The rich fossil record of vertebrate fins/limbs, although restricted to skeletal tissues, exceeds the morphol...

Design and Implementation of a Biomimetic Robotic Fish Hongan Wang The study of biomimetic robotic fish has received a growing amount of research interest in the past several years. This thesis describes the development and testing of a novel mechanical design of a biomimetic robotic fish. The robotic fish has a structure which uses oscillating caudal fins and a pair of pectoral fins to generat...

Aquatic vertebrates display a variety of control surfaces that are used for propulsion, stabilization, trim and maneuvering. Control surfaces include paired and median fins in fishes, and flippers and flukes in secondarily aquatic tetrapods. These structures initially evolved from embryonic fin folds in fishes and have been modified into complex control surfaces in derived aquatic tetrapods. Co...

The signaling molecule encoded by Sonic hedgehog (shh) participates in the patterning of several embryonic structures including limbs. During early fin development in zebrafish, a subset of cells in the posterior margin of pectoral fin buds express shh. We have shown that regulation of shh in pectoral fin buds is consistent with a role in mediating the activity of a structure analogous to the z...

a massive sequencing approach of a cDNA library, the whole set of Hox genes of the chondrichthyan, Scyliorhinus canicula. We have sequenced seven BAC clones that include all of the HoxA, HoxB and HoxD clusters. The transcriptomic data suggests that no HoxC genes have been maintained in this species. The expression of the posterior Hox genes was studied by insitu hybridization and showed that al...

a massive sequencing approach of a cDNA library, the whole set of Hox genes of the chondrichthyan, Scyliorhinus canicula. We have sequenced seven BAC clones that include all of the HoxA, HoxB and HoxD clusters. The transcriptomic data suggests that no HoxC genes have been maintained in this species. The expression of the posterior Hox genes was studied by insitu hybridization and showed that al...

a massive sequencing approach of a cDNA library, the whole set of Hox genes of the chondrichthyan, Scyliorhinus canicula. We have sequenced seven BAC clones that include all of the HoxA, HoxB and HoxD clusters. The transcriptomic data suggests that no HoxC genes have been maintained in this species. The expression of the posterior Hox genes was studied by insitu hybridization and showed that al...

Lampreys and hagfish, which together are known as the cyclostomes or 'agnathans', are the only surviving lineages of jawless fish. They diverged early in vertebrate evolution, before the origin of the hinged jaws that are characteristic of gnathostome (jawed) vertebrates and before the evolution of paired appendages. However, they do share numerous characteristics with jawed vertebrates. Studie...

Past study of interspecific variation in the swimming speed of fishes has focused on internal physiological mechanisms that may limit the ability of locomotor muscle to generate power. In this paper, we approach the question of why some fishes are able to swim faster than others from a hydrodynamic perspective, using the technique of digital particle image velocimetry which allows measurement o...