The fish species Symphodus bailloni (Valenciennes, 1839) reported in the present study were collected between June 2010 and June 2011 from the western Black Sea coasts which were previously not recorded from the Black Sea coast of Turkey. A total of 717 specimens of S. bailloni were measured, ranging between 8.9 and 15.4 cm TL. Morphometrics, meristics, and diagnostic characteristics of the spe...

The morphological discrimination between the species Astyanax altiparanae and A. asuncionensis of the upper Paraná River and Paraguay River basins, respectively, has always been difficult. Two D-loop haplogroups of A. altiparanae are known, one with the presence (AltoPR) or the absence (AltoPR-D) of a 32-bp block similar to that in A. asuncionensis. We examined these samples to characteriz...

CRYSTAL STRUCTURE OF A BONY FISH 2-MICROGLOBULIN: INSIGHTS INTO THE EVOLUTIONARY ORIGIN OF IGSF CONSTANT MOLECULES Weihong Chen, Feng Gao, Fuliang Chu, Jianhua Zhang, George F. Gao and Chun Xia From Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, The People’s Republic of China, CAS Key Laboratory of Pathogenic Microbiolo...

The search for phylogenetic signal in morphological traits using geometric morphometrics represents a powerful approach to estimate the relative weights of convergence and shared evolutionary history in shaping organismal form. We assessed phylogenetic signal in the form of ventral and dorsal haptoral anchors of 14 species of Ligophorus occurring on grey mullets (Osteichthyes: Mugilidae) from t...

Myxosporea parasitize many organs in fresh and saltwater fish. Species of the genus Myxobolus parasitizing the gills and other organs of the tambaqui Colossoma macropomum have been described. In the present study, blood smears were made from juvenile tambaqui and were stained with May Grunwald-Giemsa-Wright in order to identify myxozoan parasites. Out of a total of 36 fish examined, one specime...

BACKGROUND Discovery of Eocene non-marine vertebrates, including crocodylians, turtles, bony fishes, and mammals in Canada's High Arctic was a critical paleontological contribution of the last century because it indicated that this region of the Arctic had been mild, temperate, and ice-free during the early - middle Eocene (∼53-50 Ma), despite being well above the Arctic Circle. To date, these ...

Our understanding of early gnathostome evolution has been hampered by a generally scant fossil record beyond the Devonian. Recent discoveries from the late Silurian Xiaoxiang Fauna of Yunnan, China, have yielded significant new information, including the earliest articulated osteichthyan fossils from the Ludlow-aged Kuanti Formation. Here we describe the partial postcranium of a new primitive b...