Sharks are increasingly being recognized as important members of coral-reef communities, but their overall conservation status remains uncertain. Nine of the 29 reef-shark species are designated as data deficient in the IUCN Red List, and three-fourths of reef sharks had unknown population trends at the time of their assessment. Fortunately, reef-shark research is on the rise. This new body of ...

Longline sampling (83 sets) supplemented with 6 pop-off archival transmitting (PAT) tag deployments were used to characterize vertical habitat use by Caribbean reef sharks Carcharhinus perezi at Glover’s Reef atoll, Belize. Longline catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE) in 2 shallow reef habitats (lagoon <18 m depth, fore-reef <40 m depth) underwent significant nocturnal increases for sharks larger than...

White sharks (Carcharodon carcharias) are apex predators that play an important role in the structure and stability of marine ecosystems. Despite their ecological importance and protected status, white sharks are still subject to lethal control to reduce the risk of shark bites for recreational water users. The Shark Spotters program, pioneered in Cape Town, South Africa, provides a non-lethal ...

Carcharhinus limbatus has a cosmopolitan distribution and marked genetic structuring, mainly because of its philopatric behavior. However, analysis of this structuring has not previously included South American populations. In the present study, we analyzed a sample of adult individuals collected on the northern coast of Brazil and compared the sequences of the mitochondrial control region with...

Adult bull sharks Carcharhinus leucas were monitored with electronic tags to investigate horizontal and vertical movements in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In both locations, C. leucas showed some fidelity to specific coastal areas with only limited horizontal movements away from the tagging sites after tag attachment. Fish tagged in the Bahamas were detected mostly in the upper 20 m of the ...

Four populations of the lesion nematode Pratylenchus brachyurus were tested in a greenhouse on seven selected plant species to determine host suitability and usefulness in identifying physiological races of the nematode. The differential plants were 'Florida 77' alfalfa, 'Harvester' snap bean, 'Rough Lemon' citrus, 'Pioneer 304C' corn, 'Florunner' peanut, 'Braxton' soybean, and 'Rutgers' tomato...