Sharks of the genus Cephaloscyllium from Taiwan were reviewed. After extensive survey of the specimens deposited in useums, universities and fisheries institutions in Taiwan and Japan, the following four species were recognized as valid n Taiwanese waters: C. umbratile Jordan & Fowler, 1903, C. fasciatum Chan, 1966, C. sarawakensis Yano, Ahmad & Gambang, 2005, and C. formosanum Teng, 1962. Ceph...

Concentrations of biodiversity, or hotspots, represent conservation priorities in terrestrial ecosystems but remain largely unexplored in marine habitats. In the open ocean, many large predators such as tunas, sharks, billfishes, and sea turtles are of current conservation concern because of their vulnerability to overfishing and ecosystem role. Here we use scientific-observer records from pela...

Life history shifts in daphnids in response to fish infochemicals are generally interpreted as an adaptive response to positive size-selective predation. This interpretation does, however, not hold for larval and small juvenile planktivorous fish, which due to gape limitation, feed on small and medium sized prey. In a life table experiment we show that daphnids exposed to infochemicals excreted...

Animal protein, generally fish meal, has traditionally been used in the diet of channel catfish. However, our previous research indicates that animal protein is not needed for growing stockersize catfish to food fish when the fish are stocked at densities typical of those used in commercial catfish culture. Whether this holds when fish are stocked at high densities is not known; thus, we conduc...

The relationships between diversity and ecosystem functioning have become a major focus of science. A crucial issue is to estimate functional diversity, as it is intended to impact ecosystem dynamics and stability. However, depending on the ecosystem, it may be challenging or even impossible to directly measure ecological functions and thus functional diversity. Phylogenetic diversity was recen...

As in evaluation of the nutritive value of food articles, Iranian nutritionist used to use the nutritional tables from scientific resources other than the native ones, such differences could be regarded as source of error when the homemade fish oil products are used as a supplement of Vitamin D3 in the recommended diets; however, to clearly address the issue, more study should be conducted on t...

The purpose of the study was to determine the microbiological status of 161 samples cooled and frozen fish products collected from retail markets in the Republic of Bulgaria. The highest total viable counts (TVCs) in cooled fish products were established for silver carp (7.30 log cfu/g), Black sea roach (7.28 log cfu/g) and trout (7.11 log cfu/g), followed by common carp (6.81 log cfu/g), vacuu...

Extant vertebrates are divided into three major groups: hagfishes (Hyperotreti, myxinoids), lampreys (Hyperoartia, petromyzontids), and jawed vertebrates (Gnathostomata). The phylogenetic relationships among the groups and within the jawed vertebrates are controversial, for both morphological and molecular studies have rendered themselves to conflicting interpretations. Here, we use the sequenc...

The elasmobranchs (sharks, skates and rays) are cartilaginous fishes that are important predatory and scavenging species within aquatic ecosystems, and as living resources to human societies globally in cultural, economic, health, biodiversity and conservation contexts. There are over 900 extant species, including the world’s largest fish (the whale shark Rhincodon typus), that arose sometime d...

heavy metals entrance to fish body tissues and transferring to human body systems after their consuming makes numerous undesirable effects and health problems. the aim of this study was to determine some heavy metals (lead, cadmium and mercury) in fresh fishes marketed in khorramabad city, west of iran. in this descriptive study, five samples of 17 fish species with high consumption were purcha...