DNA barcoding has been adopted as a global bio-identification system for animals in recent years. A major national programme on DNA barcoding of fish and marine life was initiated in India by the authors during 2006 and 115 species of marine fish covering Carangids, Clupeids, Scombrids, Groupers, Sciaenids, Silverbellies, Mullids, Polynemids and Silurids representing 79 Genera and 37 Families f...

Two different gonad-infecting species of Philometra Costa, 1845 were collected from the ovary of marine perciform fishes, the blackspotted croaker Protonibea diacanthus (Sciaenidae) and the John's snapper Lutjanus johnii (Lutjanidae), from off the northern coast of Australia. Nematodes (males and females) from P. diacanthus represent a new taxon, Philometra protonibeae n. sp., which is mainly c...

To date the global initiative to barcode all fishes, FISH-BOL, has delivered barcodes for approximately 14,400 of the 30,000 fish species; there is still much to do to attain its ultimate goal of barcoding all the world’s fishes. One strategy to overcome local gaps is to initiate short but intensive efforts to collect and barcode as many species as possible from a small region – a barcode ‘blit...

Bioluminescence is primarily a marine phenomenon with 80% of metazoan bioluminescent genera occurring in the world's oceans. Here we show that bioluminescence has evolved repeatedly and is phylogenetically widespread across ray-finned fishes. We recover 27 independent evolutionary events of bioluminescence, all among marine fish lineages. This finding indicates that bioluminescence has evolved ...

Digitonin extracts have been prepared from the retinae of a dozen species of marine and euryhaline teleost fishes from turbid water habitats. Spectrophotometric analysis of the extracts shows that the photosensitive retinal pigments of these species have maximum absorption above 500 m~. In nine species there are retinenex pigments with Xmsx between 504 and 512 m/~. In the marine but euryhaline ...

Fishing has become a major conservation threat to marine fishes. Effective conservation of threatened species requires timely identification of vulnerable species. However, evaluation of extinction risk using conventional methods is difficult for the majority of fish species as the population data normally required by such methods are unavailable. This paper presents a fuzzy expert system that ...

The distribution of pelagic marine fishes and invertebrates varies seasonally. However, information on the seasonal variation of the distribution of most pelagic marine fishes and invertebrates is scarce. In this paper, seasonal changes in distribution ranges of commercially exploited pelagic fishes and invertebrates are predicted based on the existing Sea Around Us Project distribution, a pred...

Infective stages of helminths of 5 species that occur as adults in marine mammals were found in burbot, Lota lota (L.) (Gadidae), from the lower Kuskokwim River (southwestern Alaska): Diphyllobothrium alascense Rausch et Williamson, 1958; Pyramicocephalus phocarum (Fabricius, 1780); Corynosoma strumosum (Rudolphi, 1801); Corynosoma semerme (Forsell, 1904); and Pseudoterranova decipiens (Krabbe,...