To investigate the neural mechanisms that humans use to process the ambiguous force measured by the otolith organs, we measured vestibuloocular reflexes (VORs) and perceptions of tilt and translation. One primary goal was to determine if the same, or different, mechanisms contribute to vestibular perception and action. We used motion paradigms that provided identical sinusoidal inter-aural otol...

It has been well documented that vestibular-mediated cardiovascular regulation plays an important role in maintaining stable blood pressure (BP) during postural changes. But the underlying neural mechanisms remain to be elucidated. In particular, because the vestibular stimulation employed in previous animal studies activated both semicircular canals and otolith organs, the contributions of the...

We tested the hypothesis that strontium:calcium (Sr:Ca) in otoliths are reflective of environmental salinity experienced by two estuarine fishes during early life. Laboratory and field experiments were performed to examine the effects of salinity and temperature on Sr:Ca in otoliths of black drum (Pogonias cromis) and red drum (Sciaenops ocellatus). Otolith Sr:Ca of juveniles reared at four sal...

Background. Fish species may be identified based on their unique otolith shape or contour. Several pattern recognition methods have been proposed to classify fish species through morphological features of the otolith contours. However, there has been no fully-automated species identification model with the accuracy higher than 80%. The purpose of the current study is to develop a fully-automate...

The ultrathin sections of the developing otolith of mouse fetuses 15.5 days to 20 days after birth were observed with the aid of the electron microscope. The first step of otolith formation is an aggregation of organic clusters observed in the sacculus of the 15.5-day fetus. These organic structures are modified and assume a hexagonal shape in the 17.5-day fetus. The unmineralized stages of the...

A comparative morphological study was performed on the otolith growth patterns of 11 species of the genus Merluccius. The otolith growth pattern, based on the radius of the ¢rst eight growth increments (GI) from the otolith core, was determined from transverse sections of sagitta otoliths.The structure and periodicity of the GI were identi¢ed based on previous knowledge. Two cluster analyses we...

Relationships between fish length and otolith length, width mass were examined in the Australian anchovy Engraulis australis (White, 1790) recovered from food of Gannet colonies at islands Horuhoru Rock Mahuki Islands Hauraki Gulf, New Zealand. The relationships length- total (TL), otolith-weight-TL, otolith-width-TL investigated by means non-linear regression models (TL = 0.54 OL 16.86, TL 4.3...

Drawing on a panel study of parents and children, we investigate linkages between parents' marital quality and adult children's attitudes toward a range of family issues, including premarital sex, cohabitation, lifelong singlehood, and divorce. We hypothesize that parents' marital quality will be negatively related to children's support for these behaviors in adulthood and that parents' marital...

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...

Analysis of the shape properties of fish otolith is one way to identify stocks of different species in the marine environment. Length, width, area, perimeter, form factor, aspect ratio, roundness, circularity, ellipticity and rectangularity analyses of otoliths were undertaken to assess patterns of spatial and temporal stock structure of a wide-ranging fish, the Arabian yellow fin sea bream Aca...