Environmental variation can cause significant fluctuations in the survival of larval fish and plankton. Understanding these fluctuations is critical for developing more accurate fisheries models, which are needed for both scientific and socioeconomic research. Growth, survival, and dispersal of marine planktonic larvae rely strongly on their behavior. Larval fish change their vertical positioni...

After a pelagic larval phase, settlement-stage coral reef fish must locate a suitable reef habitat for juvenile life. Reef noise, produced by resident fish and invertebrates, provides an important cue for orientation and habitat selection during this process, which must often occur in environments impacted by anthropogenic noise. We adapted an established field-based protocol to test whether re...

The alligator gar (Atractosteus spatula) is the largest freshwater fish inhabiting rivers draining into the Gulf of Mexico. This primitive fish shows a fast growth rate since its early larval stages. This is attributed to the action of growth hormone (GH), an anterior pituitary gland hormone responsible for linear growth in vertebrates that can also be expressed in extrapituitary adult tissues ...

Garra rufa is one of the most popular therapeutic and commercially important fish in ichthyotherapy. Otolith and scale morphology provide new and useful information for fish identification and classification. Left-right asteriscus and lapillus otoliths from juvenile and adult doctor fish, and the scales from 6 different regions of the juvenile and adult fish body have been examined in Kangal Ba...

Understanding the functional linkages between the pelagic and demersal stages of marine organisms is a central goal in ecology. To better understand events that occurred during the larval period as well as their initial influence on juvenile traits, we examined individual level variation in early life-history traits (larval and early juvenile otolith growth rates, size-at-age, and larval durati...

The impact of young-of-the-year (YOY) fish predation on zooplankton dynamics and cascading effects down to phytoplankton were studied in lake enclosures using different densities of larval and juvenile European perch (Perca fluviatilis). Two experiments, one in June and one in August, were performed in Lake Dagstorpssjön, a slightly eutrophic lake in Scania, southern Sweden. In our experiments,...

Pigment pattern variation across species or populations offers a tractable framework in which to investigate the evolution of development. Juvenile threespine sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) from marine and freshwater environments exhibit divergent pigment patterns that are associated with ecological differences. Juvenile marine sticklebacks have a silvery appearance, whereas sticklebacks...

Otolith-based reconstructions of daily larval growth increments were used to examine the effect of variation in larval growth on size and age at settlement and post-settlement growth, survival and habitat preferences of juvenile bicolor damselfish (Stegastes partitus Poey). During August 1992 and 1994, newly settled S. partitus were collected from Montastraea coral heads and Porites rubble pile...