Rocky, a snakehead living with its keeper Chris Deverso in New York State, might get a new lease on life.
Snakeheads are Asian predatory fishes capable of breathing oxygen from the air and move over land. They have been banned in the USA since they might wreck havoc with North American ecosystems if introduced to the wild.
A study proposing a ban on spear guns and gill nets in the Great Barrier Reef is now being criticised by Australian scientists saying its results – which were obtained from Kenya and Papua New Guinea – aren’t relevant to the Great Barrier Reef.
“Small fish may have small brains but they still have some surprising cognitive abilities”, says Dr Jeremy Kendal* from Durham University’s Anthropology Department.
A moray eel species native to warm tropical waters have been caught in the considerably colder waters found off the coast of Cornwall, UK.
We often think of evolution as something extremely slow that takes place over the course of thousands or even millions of years. The truth is however that certain adaptations can occur very quickly, sometimes over the course of just a few generations.
A new species of wrasse living off the Brazilian coast has been described by Osmar Luiz, Jr, Carlos Ferreira and Luiz Rocha. The new species has been named Halichoeres sazimai after Brazilian ichthyologist Ivan Sazima from Universidade Estadual de Campinas in São Paolo.
U.S. researchers John F. Switzer* and Robert M. Wood** have described a new species of darter from the Meramec River drainage of Missouri, USA. The new species has been named Etheostoma erythrozonum and is the first known fish species endemic to the Meramec River drainage. Its common name is Meramec Saddled Darter.
Brachypopomus gauderio is not the only electric knifefish recently described from South America, U.S. researchers John P. Sullivan* and Carl D. Hopkins** have described another member of the genus Brachyhypopomus and given it the name Brachyhypopomus bullocki.
Brazilian ichthyologists Julia Giora and Luiz Malabarba have described a new species of electric knifefish and named it Brachypopomus gauderio.
Several types of commonly used fish egg disinfectants increase the risk of swim bladder disorder in fish, a new study from Israel reveals.
In several species of fish, such as the cichlid species Neolamprologus pulcher, it is common for subordinate females to help an unrelated dominant breeding pair raise their young. The reason behind this seemingly altruistic behaviour, known as alloparental care, has puzzled scientists for many years and one of the most widely spread hypotheses put forward has been the ‘pay-to-stay’ hypothesis. According to the ‘pay-to-stay’ rationale,
Scientists from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have revealed that largemouth bass injected with oestrogen produces less hepcidin than normally. Hepcidin is an important iron-regulating hormone in fish, amphibians and mammals, and researchers also suspect that hepcidin may act as an antimicrobial peptide.
As reported earlier, fish populations may adapt and change in response to significant fishing pressure. Researchers are now suggesting that the genetic make-up of cod in the Atlantic Ocean might be changing, since cods genetically predisposition to seek out shallower waters are more likely to end up in nets or on fishing lines, while deep-dwellers are more likely to survive and reproduce.
After acknowledging the failure of current fishery policies within the union, EU officials are now considering banning the practice of discarding fish at sea.
If you want to learn more about how the charismatic creatures known as stingrays feed, you should check out a new study published in the most recent issue of Neotropical Ichthyology.
