Empirical links between egg size and duration of parental care in fishes have generated a considerable amount of theory concerning life history evolution. However, to date, this link has not been investigated in relation to other important life-history traits such as clutch size and body size, or while controlling for shared ancestry between species. We provide the first phylogenetically based ...

Even though genetic aspects of some cichlids have been widely studied over the last decades, little is known about the genomic structure of Cichlidae when compared to the large number of species in the family. In this paper, the first chromosomal data for Cichlasoma sanctifranciscense Kullander, 1983 are presented and discussed based on cytotaxonomic and karyoevolutionary inferences on Cichlaso...

Family level molecular phylogenetic analyses of cichlid fishes have generally suffered from a limited number of characters and ⁄or poor taxonomic sampling across one or more major geographic assemblage, and therefore have not provided a robust test of early intrafamilial diversification. Herein we use both nuclear and mitochondrial nucleotide characters and direct optimization to reconstruct a ...

The perciform group Labroidei includes approximately 2600 species and comprises some of the most diverse and successful lineages of teleost fishes. Composed of four major clades, Cichlidae, Labridae (wrasses, parrotfishes, and weed whitings), Pomacentridae (damselfishes), and Embiotocidae (surfperches); labroids have been an icon for studies of biodiversity, adaptive radiation, and sexual selec...

Developmental plasticity of spectral processing in vertebrates was investigated in fish by using an innate behavior, the optomotor response. Rearing blue acara (Aequidens pulcher; Cichlidae) under white lights of different intensities as well as deprivation of long wavelengths induced significant changes in the animals' responses to chromatic stimuli. Deprivation of short wavelengths had no eff...

The Itapecuru is a relatively large river in the northeastern Brazilian state of Maranhão. During several expeditions to this basin, we collected 69 fish species belonging to 65 genera, 29 families and 10 orders. Characiformes and Siluriformes were the orders with the largest number of species and Characidae, Loricariidae, Cichlidae, Auchenipteridae and Pimelodidae were the richest families. Ab...

A set of cytological studies performed in the utricle and saccule of Astronotus ocellatus (Teleostei, Percomorphi, Cichlidae) identified two basic types of hair cells and others with some intermediate characteristics. This paper reports on applying the same techniques to the saccule of Carassius auratus (Teleostei, Otophysi, Cyprinidae) and demonstrates similar types of hair cells to those foun...

The development of individual differences in behaviour in a novel environment, in the presence of a strange fish and during aggressive interactions with a mirror-image was studied in the lion-headed cichlid (Steatocranus casuarius, Teleostei, Cichlidae). No consistency in behaviour was found at 4-5.5 months of age. However, behaviours scored in situations involving a discrete source of stress (...

With between 2000 and 2500 known species, cichlids (Teleostei, Cichlidae) are probably the most species rich family of vertebrate animals. With over 1500 species, more than half of the world's cichlid species live in the African Great Lakes, where several endemic species ̄ocks evolved in parallel. Speciation rates in some of these ̄ocks are unrivaled among vertebrates and they are among the most ...

An updated checklist of the distribution of fishes that inhabit the continental waters of the Mexican state of Chiapas is presented. The state was compartmentalized into 12 hydrological regions for the purpose of understanding the distribution of fish fauna across a state with large physiographic variance. The ichthyofauna of Chiapas is represented by 311 species distributed in two classes, 26 ...