Small Fish Out of Water

Fish out of water: terrestrial jumping by fully aquatic fishes.

Many teleosts that live at the water's edge will voluntarily strand themselves to evade predators or escape poor conditions-this behavior has been repeatedly observed in the field for killifishes (Cyprinodontiformes). Although most killifishes are considered fully aquatic and possess no obvious morphological specializations to facilitate terrestrial locomotion, individuals from several differen...

FISH Out of WATER: How Much Air is Too Much?

A Fish Eye Out of Water: Ten Visual Opsins in the Four-Eyed Fish, Anableps anableps

The "four-eyed" fish Anableps anableps has numerous morphological adaptations that enable above and below-water vision. Here, as the first step in our efforts to identify molecular adaptations for aerial and aquatic vision in this species, we describe the A. anableps visual opsin repertoire. We used PCR, cloning, and sequencing to survey cDNA using unique primers designed to amplify eight seque...

Effects of Small Dams on Cold Water Stream Fish Communities

—Dams provide many benefits to society, yet they have profound impacts on aquatic ecosystems. In addition to blocking fish migration, small surface-release dams on coldwater streams generally increase water temperature below the dam. The goal of this study was to evaluate how small, surface-release dams affect fish communities, separating the total effect into components related to fragmentatio...

Fish gill morphology: inside out.

In this short review of fish gill morphology we cover some basic gross anatomy as well as in some more detail the microscopic anatomy of the branchial epithelia from representatives of the major extant groups of fishes (Agnathans, Elasmobranchs, and Teleosts). The agnathan hagfishes have primitive gill pouches, while the lampreys have arch-like gills similar to the higher fishes. In the lamprey...