According to the immunocompetence handicap hypothesis, males with attractive sexual ornamentation are more handicapped than their less ornamented rivals because of the immunosuppressive androgens required for the production of secondary sexual characters. Here we studied the predictions of the hypothesis in a wild cyprinid fish, the roach (Rutilus rutilus). We assayed (1) sexual ornamentation (...

Physiological parameters were measured after experimental infection of roach (Rutilus rutilus L.) with Rhipidocotyle fennica Gibson, Valtonen et Taskinen, 1992 (Digenea) cercariae. The fish were caught from two lakes: a eutrophic bleached kraft mill effluent (BKME)-contaminated lake and an oligotrophic unpolluted lake. The intensity of infection was followed up to 10 days post infection (p.i.) ...

Flow-through toxicity tests were conducted on common freshwater fishes: rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), roach (Rutilus rutilus), perch (Perca fluviatilis) and dace (Leuciscus leuciscus), to estimate their sensitivity to acute toxicity of nickel. The 96-hour median lethal concentration (96-hour LC50) values obtained from the tests ranged fr...