Desert springs, which harbor diverse and endemic invertebrate assemblages, are often used as refuge habitats for protected fish species. Additionally, many of these springs have been colonized by invasive fish species. However, the potential impacts of recently established fish populations on invertebrate communities in desert springs have been relatively unexplored. We conducted a mesocosm exp...

Sex-specific markers are a prerequisite for understanding reproductive biology, genetic factors involved in sex differences, mechanisms of sex determination, and ultimately the evolution of sex chromosomes. The Western mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis, may be considered a model species for sex-chromosome evolution, as it displays female heterogamety (ZW/ZZ), and is also ecologically interesting a...

Species-specific differences in the responses of egg-laying mosquitoes (Diptera: Culicidae) to the presence of fish exudates in oviposition sites in laboratory bioassays have been related to the likelihood of encountering mosquito-eating fish in natural oviposition sites. We examined the responses of egg-laying mosquitoes to the presence of larvivorous fish in oviposition sites to test this hyp...

Sub-lethal studies of chlorpyrifos, O,O-diethyl-O-(3,5,6-trichloro-2-pyridyl) phosphorothioate on mosquito fish, Gambusia affinis were carried out in vivo, for 20 days to assess the locomotor behavior in relation to bioaccumulation and interaction with a targeted enzyme, acetylcholinesterase (AChE, EC: 3.1.1.7). Fish exposed to sub-lethal concentration of 60 microg/L (1/5 of LC 50) were under s...

Sex steroids play major roles in vertebrate sexual differentiation. Unexpectedly, we now find that exposure to elevated levels of the naturally occurring stress hormone cortisol can also masculinize sexually dimorphic morphological characters and behaviour in adult female mosquitofish (Gambusia affinis) in a dose-dependent manner. Females masculinized by cortisol developed elongated anal fins w...

This study was conducted to investigate the preliminary environmental and mammalian toxicology of neem oil, temephos and chlorpyriphos-methyl/fenitrothion. Culex pipiens, Daphnia magna and Gambusia affinis were used to study environmental impact. A high level of toxicity was observed, with slight differences between organisms. The emulsifiers individually also displayed toxicity towards the tes...

Female mate choice is fundamental to sexual selection, and determining molecular underpinnings of female preference variation is important for understanding mating character evolution. Previously it was shown that whole-brain expression of a synaptic plasticity marker, neuroserpin, positively correlates with mating bias in the female choice poeciliid, Xiphophorus nigrensis, when exposed to cons...

In this paper we develop high order positivity-preserving finite volume weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes for solving a hierarchical size-structured population model with nonlinear growth, mortality and reproduction rates. We carefully treat the technical complications in boundary conditions and global integration terms to ensure high order accuracy and positivity-preserving p...