Sensory systems play a key role in social behavior by mediating the detection and analysis of communication signals. In mormyrid fishes, electric signals are processed within a dedicated sensory pathway, providing a unique opportunity to relate sensory biology to social behavior. Evolutionary changes within this pathway led to new perceptual abilities that have been linked to increased rates of...

Marine systems have traditionally been thought of as "open" with few barriers to gene flow. In particular, many marine organisms in the Southern Ocean purportedly possess circumpolar distributions that have rarely been well verified. Here, we use the highly abundant and endemic Southern Ocean brittle star Ophionotus victoriae to examine genetic structure and determine whether barriers to gene f...

The parasitic nature of viruses is a source of intense interest owing to the wide variety of potential hosts, which include humans, livestock, fungi, agricultural crops, as well as many others [1]. Viruses are differentiated by variations in properties such as size, capsid morphology, genomic composition, replication strategy, and host target [1, 2]. The family Totiviridae of dsRNA viruses is c...

The enigma of the transmissible disease of Helminthosporium victoriae has almost been resolved. Diseased isolates are doubly infected with two distinct viruses, the victorivirus Helminthosporium victoriae virus 190S and the chrysovirus HvV145S. Mixed infection, however, is not required for disease development. DNA transformation experiments and transfection assays using purified HvV190S virions...

The study estimated population parameters of four leading commercial fish species Awach Kibuon River in Lake Victoria Basin, Kenya to inform management interventions for sustainability. Length data were collected monthly from January December 2020 and length-frequency analysis conducted FiSAT II software utilizing ELEFAN I Routines. Exploitation rates (E = 0.63) Protopterus aethiopicus (Heckel,...

F1 offspring of the African cichlid Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor victoriae Seegers, 1990 from swamp (low oxygen) and lake (high oxygen) origin were raised under normoxia and submitted to hypoxia acclimation (0.8 ± 0.4 mg L–1) and normoxia acclimation (7.4 ± 0.3 mg L–1) for 4 weeks. Haematocrit and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) specific activities in the liver, white skeletal muscle, heart, and br...

Dissolved oxygen (DO) can be a strong predictor of intraspecific variation in morphology and physiology in fishes. In the African cichlid Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor victoriae Seegers, 1990, fish reared under low DO develop larger gills, deeper bodies, and larger, wider heads than full siblings reared under high DO, which could influence swim performance. In this study, we compared critical sw...