244 research outputs found
Data report for Atlantic pelagic zoogeography
This data report fulfils two functions. It (1) gives station data
for 1022 midwater trawl collections made in the Atlantic Ocean between
1961 and 1974 by the writers and their colleagues (Table 1, Figure 1,
and Appendix 1) and for 531 Atlantic neuston collections made between
1964 and 1974 (Table 2 and Appendix 2), and (2) gives the geographic
coordinates for a set of boundaries that divides the Atlantic Ocean
between the arctic-subarctic boundary and the subtropical convergence
at 40°S into a system of faunal regions and provinces (Figure 2 and
Appendix 3). The derivation of these boundaries is explained briefly.Prepared for the National Science Foundation
under Grant DES 74-23209
Mesopelagic fishes in Gulf Stream cold-core rings
Calculations of abundance of midwater fishes in the families Myctophidae, Gonostomatidae, Photichthyidae, and Stemoptychidae for the 1000 m water column were made in cold-core rings and in the nearby Sargasso Sea and Slope Water…
Midwater fish data report for warm-core Gulf Stream rings cruises 1981-1982
This data report is for midwater fishes collected during the
multidisciplinary Warm-Core Rings Program in 1981 and 1982.
Stations were made in and near three warm-core rings on five cruises
within a period of 14 months. On Atlantis II cruise 110 (September-October
1981) six stations were made in and around ring 81-D (age two months).
Stations were made in the vicinity of ring 82-B on three cruises in
1982--twelve stations during Oceanus 118 (April) when the ring was two months
old, 15 stations during Oceanus 121 (June) at age four months, and 19 stations
during Oceanus 125 (August) at age 5.5 months. Finally, twelve stations were
made in and near meander/ring 82-H (age 0) during Knorr 98 in
September/October 1982 (Tables 1-10).
The collections were made with a new midwater trawl - the MOCNESS-20
(MOC-20) (Wiebe et al., 1985), a scaled-up version of the MOCNESS-1 (an
apparatus for collecting zooplankton; Wiebe et al., 1976) and successor to the
MOCNESS-10 (like the MOC-20, a midwater trawl). (The number forming the
distinctive part of the name of these nets is equal to the area of the
projected mouth in square meters when the apparatus is in a common fishing
attitude.) The MOC-20 consists of a set of 3-mm mesh rectangular nets that
can be opened and closed by command from the surface via a signal-conducting
towing warp. Apparatus attached to the net frame measures and transmits
depth, temperature, conductivity, flow, and net-frame angle to the towing
ship's laboratory. Flow (net speed), vertical velocity, and net-frame angle
allow computation of the water volume filtered . On the WCR cruises a set of
five or six nets was used. One net (not used for quantitative analyses) was
fished down to 1000 m, then closed and a second net opened. The second and
successive nets were closed and opened sequentially at intervals as the
apparatus was brought back to the surface. A surface-to-surface cycle with
the gear is referred to as a station, the contents of a single net as a
collection. In addition to be1ng described by latitude and longitude,
stat1ons are located in the same radial coordinate system used to composite
the warm-core rings physical data, that is, by distance and bearing from the
moving ring center.Funding was provided by the National Scten.ce Foundation
under Grant Numbers OCE 80-17270 and OCE 86-20402
Food habits of Atlantic white-sided dolphins (Lagenorhynchus acutus) off the coast of New England
This paper is not subject to U.S. copyright. The definitive version was published in Fishery Bulletin 107 (2009): 384–394.Although the Atlantic
white-sided dolphin (Lagenorhynchus
acutus) is one of the most common
dolphins off New England, little has
been documented about its diet in
the western North Atlantic Ocean.
Current federal protection of marine
mammals limits the supply of animals
for investigation to those incidentally
caught in the nets of commercial fishermen
with observers aboard. Stomachs
of 62 L. acutus were examined; of
these 62 individuals, 28 of them were
caught by net and 34 were animals
stranded on Cape Cod. Most of the
net-caught L. acutus were from the
deeper waters of the Gulf of Maine. A
single stomach was from the continental
slope south of Georges Bank. At
least twenty-six fish species and three
cephalopod species were eaten. The
predominant prey were silver hake
(Merluccius bilinearis), spoonarm
octopus (Bathypolypus bairdii), and
haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus).
The stomach from a net-caught L.
acutus on the continental slope contained
7750 otoliths of the Madeira
lanternfish (Ceratoscopelus maderensis).
Sand lances (Ammodytes spp.)
were the most abundant (541 otoliths)
species in the stomachs of stranded
L. acutus. Seasonal variation in diet
was indicated; pelagic Atlantic herring
(Clupea harengus) was the most
important prey in summer, but was
rare in winter. The average length of
fish prey was approximately 200 mm,
and the average mantle length of
cephalopod prey was approximately
50 mm
The distribution of mesopelagic fishes in the equatorial and western North Atlantic Ocean
Examination of about 290 midwater trawl hauls made to a depth of 1000 m in the equatorial and western North Atlantic Ocean from 1961 to 1968 suggests that at least 10 physical boundaries determine the ranges of mesopelagic fishes. The boundaries delimit six pelagic regions----the Slope Water Region, the Northern Sargasso Sea, the Southern Sargasso Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, and the Amazonian Region----and partly delimit four others----the Eastern Gyre and the Labrador, Lesser Antillean, and Guinean regions...
Ceratoscopelus maderensis : pecular sound-scattering layer identified with this myctophid fish
Reprint. Science, vol. 160, no. 3831, 1968, pp. 991-993. Originally issued as Reference No. 68-58, series later renamed WHOI-.A sound- scattering layer, composed of discrete
hyperbolic echo-sequences and apparently restricted to the
Slope Water region of the western North Atlantic, has been
identified from the Deep Submergence Research Vehicle ALVIN
with schools of the myctophid fish Ceratoscopelus maderensis.
By diving into the layer and using ALVIN's echo-ranging sonar,
we approached and visually identified the sound scatterers. The
number of echo sequences observed with the surface echo-sounder
(1 /23. 76 x 105 cubic meters of water) checked roughly with the
number of sonar targets observed from the submarine (1/7. 45 x
105 cubic meters) . The fish schools appeared to be 5 to 10 meters
thick, 10 to 100 meters in diameter, and on centers 100 to 200
meters apart. Density within schools was estimated at 10 to 15
fish per cubic meter.Supported in part by contracts Nonr-3484(00)
and Nonr-4029(00) and by NSF grant GB-4431
Food habits of Sowerby's beaked whales (Mesoplodon bidens) taken in the pelagic drift gillnet fishery of the western North Atlantic
We describe the food habits of the Sowerby’s beaked whale
(Mesoplodon bidens) from observations of 10 individuals taken as bycatch in the pelagic drift gillnet fishery for Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) in the western North Atlantic and 1 stranded individual from Kennebunk, Maine. The stomachs of 8 bycaught whales were intact and contained prey. The diet of these 8 whales was dominated by meso- and benthopelagic fishes that composed 98.5% of the prey items found in their stomachs and cephalopods that accounted for only 1.5% of the number of prey. Otoliths and jaws representing at least 31 fish taxa from 15 families were present in the stomach contents. Fishes, primarily from the families Moridae (37.9% of prey), Myctophidae (22.9%), Macrouridae (11.2%), and Phycidae (7.2%), were present in all 8 stomachs. Most prey were from 5 fish taxa: Shortbeard Codling (Laemonema barbatulum) accounted for 35.3% of otoliths, Cocco’s Lanternfish (Lobianchia gemellarii) contributed 12.9%, Marlin-spike (Nezumia bairdii) composed 10.8%, lanternfishes (Lampanyctus spp.) accounted for 8.4%; and Longfin Hake (Phycis chesteri) contributed 6.7%. The mean number of otoliths per stomach was 1196 (range: 327–3452). Most of the fish prey found in the stomachs was quite small, ranging in length from 4.0 to 27.7 cm. We conclude that the Sowerby’s beaked whales that we examined in this study fed on large numbers of relatively small meso- and benthopelagic fishes that are abundant along the slope and shelf break of the western North Atlantic
Making subaltern shikaris: histories of the hunted in colonial central India
Academic histories of hunting or shikar in India have almost entirely focused on the sports hunting of British colonists and Indian royalty. This article attempts to balance this elite bias by focusing on the meaning of shikar in the construction of the Gond ‘tribal’ identity in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century colonial central India. Coining the term ‘subaltern shikaris’ to refer to the class of poor, rural hunters, typically ignored in this historiography, the article explores how the British managed to use hunting as a means of state penetration into central India’s forest interior, where they came to regard their Gond forest-dwelling subjects as essentially and eternally primitive hunting tribes. Subaltern shikaris were employed by elite sportsmen and were also paid to hunt in the colonial regime’s vermin eradication programme, which targeted tigers, wolves, bears and other species identified by the state as ‘dangerous beasts’. When offered economic incentives, forest dwellers usually willingly participated in new modes of hunting, even as impact on wildlife rapidly accelerated and became unsustainable. Yet as non-indigenous approaches to nature became normative, there was sometimes also resistance from Gond communities. As overkill accelerated, this led to exclusion of local peoples from natural resources, to their increasing incorporation into dominant political and economic systems, and to the eventual collapse of hunting as a livelihood. All of this raises the question: To what extent were subaltern subjects, like wildlife, ‘the hunted’ in colonial India
Rare Variant Analysis of Human and Rodent Obesity Genes in Individuals with Severe Childhood Obesity
A. Palotie on työryhmän UK10K Consortium jäsen.Obesity is a genetically heterogeneous disorder. Using targeted and whole-exome sequencing, we studied 32 human and 87 rodent obesity genes in 2,548 severely obese children and 1,117 controls. We identified 52 variants contributing to obesity in 2% of cases including multiple novel variants in GNAS, which were sometimes found with accelerated growth rather than short stature as described previously. Nominally significant associations were found for rare functional variants in BBS1, BBS9, GNAS, MKKS, CLOCK and ANGPTL6. The p.S284X variant in ANGPTL6 drives the association signal (rs201622589, MAF similar to 0.1%, odds ratio = 10.13, p-value = 0.042) and results in complete loss of secretion in cells. Further analysis including additional case-control studies and population controls (N = 260,642) did not support association of this variant with obesity (odds ratio = 2.34, p-value = 2.59 x 10(-3)), highlighting the challenges of testing rare variant associations and the need for very large sample sizes. Further validation in cohorts with severe obesity and engineering the variants in model organisms will be needed to explore whether human variants in ANGPTL6 and other genes that lead to obesity when deleted in mice, do contribute to obesity. Such studies may yield druggable targets for weight loss therapies.Peer reviewe
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