Community and Conservation Ecology Group, University of Groningen, P. O. Box 11103, 9700 CC Groningen, The Netherlands, email: [email protected]; Max-Planck-Institut für Limnologie, August-Thienemann-Str. 2, D-24306 Plön, Germany; Leibniz-Institute for Marine Sciences IFM-GEOMAR, Evolutionary Ecology of Marine Fishes, Düsternbrooker Weg 20, D-24105 Kiel, Germany, Leibniz-Institute for Marine S...

Biodiversity patterns across the marine tropics have intrigued evolutionary biologists and ecologists alike. Tropical coral reefs host 1/3 of all marine species of fish on 0.1% of the ocean's surface. Yet our understanding of how mechanistic processes have underpinned the generation of this diversity is limited. However, it has become clear that the biogeographic history of the marine tropics h...

The aims of this study were to produce a checklist of the metazoan parasites of fishes from the Celestun coastal lagoon and to determine the degree of faunal similarity among the fishes based on the metazoan parasites they share. A checklist was prepared including all available records (1996-2014) of parasites of marine, brackish water and freshwater fishes of the area. All of these data were i...

It is known from the extensive measurements of Gray (1954) that the gills of marine fishes of the Atlantic Coast of North America show a wide variation in the extent of their gill area. This is true whether the area is based on the unit of body surface area or on a unit of body weight. Little data are available, however, for fishes from European waters (Byczkowska-Smyk,* 1957, 1958, 1959)The pr...

At least 100 fish species are known to be present in the intertidal areas (estuaries, mudflats and salt marshes) of Mont Saint-Michel Bay. These and other comparable shallow marine coastal waters, such as estuaries and lagoons, play a nursery role for many fish species. However, in Europe little attention has been paid to the value of tidal salt marshes for fishes. Between March 1996 and April ...

The analysis of net catches made in Absheron Gulfs of the Caspian Sea during 2011-2012 is provided. The ichthyofauna of Absheron Gulfs, including 26 species found in the North Gulf, and 33 species and subspecies found in the South Gulf was studied for the first time. A taxonomical and ecological diversity of the fish fauna of North and South Absheron Gulfs is characterized. The peculiarities of...

Female adult specimens of the pennellid copepod Peniculus minuticaudae Shiino, 1956 were collected from the fins of two species of monacanthid fishes, threadsail filefish (Stephanolepis cirrhifer) and black scraper (Thamnaconus modestus), cultured in floating cages in Japan. These collections represent the first records of P. minuticaudae from farmed marine fishes as well as the first records o...

F ar more biomass is contained in marine primary producers than in marine animals at higher levels of the food chain. This relation suggests that animals—par-ticularly secondary consumers such as fishes—must play a negligible role in elemental cycling in the world's oceans (1). However, given that the midwater ecosystem is the largest on Earth, with over 99.5% of the habitable space (2), the ac...

Invertebrates can acquire functional genes via horizontal gene transfer (HGT) from bacteria but fishes are not known to do so. We provide the first reliable evidence of one HGT event from marine bacteria to fishes. The HGT appears to have occurred after emergence of the teleosts. The transferred gene is expressed and regulated developmentally. Its successful integration and expression may chang...

Locomotion and feeding are key axes of diversity among fishes, and these are commonly integrated for successful prey capture. However, little is known about biomechanical variation among highly ecologically divergent populations of fishes. Three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus, is an ideal species for teasing apart the relationships between ecology, form and function, given the numer...