The Fishes of Maryland

Fish, from both a commercial and a sporting standpoint. Based on fishes collected in Maryland only. A general treatise on fishes, setting forth the species, describing them and telling of their distribution, habits and other pertinent facts such as adaptations and coloring. Includes marine, freshwater littoral fishes. (PDF contains 120 pages

Field Guide to Nonindigenous Marine Fishes of Florida

The purpose of this field guide is to provide information on nonindigenous (i.e., non-native) fishes that have been observed in Florida’s marine waters. Introductions of non-native marine fishes into Florida’s waters could be intentional or unintentional, and are likely from a variety of sources, including aquarium releases, escape from aquaculture, loss due to extreme weather events (e.g., flooding from hurricanes), and possibly transfer with ballast water or hull-fouling. Presently the lionfishes (Pterois volitans and P. miles) are the only non-native marine fish species known to be established along the coast of Florida. All other marine fishes in this guide (except the euryhaline species, see below) have infrequent occurrences, occur singly or in small groups, and have not yet become self-sustaining populations. Aquarium releases are one of the major pathways whereby nonindigenous fishes gain access to new environments (Ruiz et al. 1997; Fuller et al. 1999). Most of the nonindigenous marine fishes found in Florida’s waters are thought to be aquarium fishes that either were illegally released into the ocean or escaped captivity (e.g., during severe storm/flooding events). Indeed, south Florida is a hotspot for nonindigenous marine aquarium fishes (Semmens et al. 2004). Increased public awareness of the problems caused by released or escaped aquarium fishes may aid in stemming the frequency of releases. For example, HabitattitudeTM (www.habitattitude.net) is a national public awareness and partnership campaign that encourages aquarists and water gardeners to prevent the release of unwanted aquarium plants, fish and other animals. It prompts hobbyists to adopt alternative actions when dealing with these aquatic plants and animals. (PDF file contains 133 pages.

Additional Records of Acanthocephalan Parasites from Arkansas Fishes, with New Records from Missouri Fishes

Over the last decade, our research consortium has provided information on acanthocephalan parasites of Arkansas vertebrates, including records from some of the state’s fishes. Here, we continue to provide data on new geographic and new host records of acanthocephalans from Arkansas fishes. In addition, for the first time, we report records of acanthocephalans for some Missouri fishes. We document 2 new state records as well as 10 new host records for some fish acanthocephalans

Fish and freshwater crayfish communities of the Brunswick and Preston Rivers

The Leschenault Inlet, located on the Swan Coastal Plain near Bunbury, is the estuary of the Brunswick, Collie, Preston and Ferguson Rivers. There is a considerable amount of information detailing the fish fauna of the Leschenault Inlet with Potter et al. (1997, 2000) recording 42 species of fish from 26 families. The estuary is dominated by gobies, atherinids and clupeids which comprised almost 90% of the fishes. Potter et al. (2000) also reported 13 species from gill net captures in the lower (tidal) Collie River. Neither of these studies reported on the fishes found within the freshwaters of the Leschenault Inlet catchment and although Pen & Potter (1990, 1991a, b, c, d, 1992) conducted biological studies on a number of native and introduced freshwater fishes in the upper Collie River by, there is no published information regarding the prevailing fishes (or freshwater crayfishes) of the Brunswick or Preston Rivers. Hale et al. (2000) reported on the fish fauna of one site in the upper Brunswick River, near the confluence with the Augustus River, one site in the Augustus River and two sites in the Ernest River. While they recorded only two species of freshwater fish from the Ernest River (i.e. Western Pygmy Perch (Edelia vittata) and Nightfish (Bostockia porosa)), they captured a further two endemic freshwater fishes from the Augustus and upper Brunswick Rivers (i.e. Western Minnow (Galaxias occidentalis) and Freshwater Cobbler (Tandanus bostocki)) as well as larval (ammocoetes) Pouched Lampreys (Geotria australis) and three introduced fishes (i.e. Rainbow Trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss), Brown Trout (Salmo trutta) and Eastern Mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki)). The presence of the larger introduced fishes, the lamprey and the Freshwater Cobbler in the Augustus River compared to the Ernest River was attributed to the provision of environmental water releases from Freshwater Lake. These species are more often associated with permanent waters over ephemeral systems. The distributions of fishes inhabiting the inland waters of the south-western corner of Western Australia were documented in Morgan et al. (1998) and include the systems from Capel to Two People’s Bay east of Albany and thus does not encompass the more northerly Leschenault catchments, but does include some sites on the Collie River South Branch. The aims of the present study were to ameliorate the paucity of knowledge of the fishes and freshwater crayfishes inhabiting two of the major systems flowing into the Leschenault Inlet and thereby provide the Leschenault Catchment Council with an overview of the fishes of the Brunswick and Preston Rivers

Protein and amino acid requirements of warm-water fishes: a tool to efficient and low-cost fish feed production in Nigeria

Numerous investigations have utilized various semi-purified and purified diets to estimate the protein and amino acid requirements of several temperate fishes. The vast literature on the protein and amino acid requirements of fishes has continued to omit that of the tropical warm water species. The net effect is that fish feed formulation in Nigeria have relied on the requirement for temperate species. This paper attempts to review the state of knowledge on the protein amino acid requirements of fishes with emphasis on the warm water species, the methods of protein and amino acid requirement determinations and the influence of various factors on nutritional requirement studies. Finally evidence are presented with specific examples on how requirements of warm water fishes are different from the temperate species and used this to justify why fish feed formulation in Nigeria are far from being efficien

The Fishes of Chadron Creek, Dawes County, Nebraska

This first modern comprehensive survey of fishes collected from Chadron Creek, Dawes County, Nebraska, documents collections made with a small seine and backpack electrofisher during November 2007 and February and March 2008. Chadron Creek’s fish community is of low diversity. The total of 3 collections at each of 9 stations along the length of Chadron Creek resulted in 254 individual fishes, which represented only 7 species within 4 families. Water quality parameters, including dissolved oxygen, pH, conductivity, total dissolved solids, temperature and fecal coliform counts indicate that Chadron Creek is a healthy stream capable of supporting a greater diversity of fishes. Land management practices may be responsible for elevated fecal coliform levels at one locality on the creek. Comparisons of fishes collected herein are made with historical records of fish collected between 1893 and 2000, and show that there are 50% fewer species present than those known from historical accounts

The lower actinopterygian fauna from the Lower Carboniferous Albert shale formation of New Brunswick, Canada – a review of previously described taxa and a description of a new genus and species

The Lower Carboniferous Albert shale formation of New Brunswick, Canada, is well-known for the preservation of countless articulated lower actinopterygian palaeoniscoid fishes. This site is at the boundary between the Devonian and the Lower Carboniferous, making the lower actinopterygians preserved at this site important. The taxonomic history of previously described Albert shale formation actinopterygians is reviewed here. Many of the earliest described actinopterygian taxa from the Albert Formation are represented by poorly preserved type specimens and have the distinction of being moved from one paraphyletic genus to another paraphyletic genus. While these taxa are in need of major redescriptions, such work is premature until the large paraphyletic or polyphyletic genera they have been placed in, Palaeonicus[m], †Rhadinichthys, and †Elonichthys, are redescribed. But there is new diversity within the Albert shale formation. Here, a new lower actinopterygian species, †Lambeia pectinatus, is described from one well-preserved specimen. This new species is characterized by dorsal ridge scales with pectinated posterior margins, body scales inserted between adjacent dorsal ridge scales, body scales with pectinated posterior and ventral margins, the presence of a ventral rostro-premaxilla and a median rostral bone, a separate and distinct antorbital bone, and a single supraorbital bone. This newly described species is distinct from previously described fishes from the Albert Formation, and the morphology of this newly described species is more similar to later Carboniferous fishes rather than Devonian fishes. This suggests that morphological features commonly seen in Carboniferous fishes and rarely seen in Devonian fishes were present early in the Carboniferous

Fish eye optics

We report on small student (high school) project of the Czech Academy of Sciences dealing with animal (fish) eyes and possible application in science and technology. Albeit most fishes have refractive eyes, the recent discoveries confirm that some fishes have reflective eyes with strange arrangements as well

A phylogenomic perspective on the radiation of ray-finned fishes based upon targeted sequencing of ultraconserved elements

Ray-finned fishes constitute the dominant radiation of vertebrates with over 30,000 species. Although molecular phylogenetics has begun to disentangle major evolutionary relationships within this vast section of the Tree of Life, there is no widely available approach for efficiently collecting phylogenomic data within fishes, leaving much of the enormous potential of massively parallel sequencing technologies for resolving major radiations in ray-finned fishes unrealized. Here, we provide a genomic perspective on longstanding questions regarding the diversification of major groups of ray-finned fishes through targeted enrichment of ultraconserved nuclear DNA elements (UCEs) and their flanking sequence. Our workflow efficiently and economically generates data sets that are orders of magnitude larger than those produced by traditional approaches and is well-suited to working with museum specimens. Analysis of the UCE data set recovers a well-supported phylogeny at both shallow and deep time-scales that supports a monophyletic relationship between Amia and Lepisosteus (Holostei) and reveals elopomorphs and then osteoglossomorphs to be the earliest diverging teleost lineages. Divergence time estimation based upon 14 fossil calibrations reveals that crown teleosts appeared ~270 Ma at the end of the Permian and that elopomorphs, osteoglossomorphs, ostarioclupeomorphs, and euteleosts diverged from one another by 205 Ma during the Triassic. Our approach additionally reveals that sequence capture of UCE regions and their flanking sequence offers enormous potential for resolving phylogenetic relationships within ray-finned fishes