Advancing marine conservation
Uniquely among vertebrates, seahorses and pipefishes (Family Syngnathidae) incubate their eggs within a male brood pouch. This has contributed to a widespread, but poorly founded belief, that the eggs are fertilised using spermatozoa that are deposited directly into the brood pouch via an internal sperm duct. Anatomical dissections showed, however, not only that direct sperm …
Sexual selection theory predicts a positive correlation between relative parental investment and mate choice. In syngnathid fishes (seahorses and pipefish), males brood offspring in specialized brooding structures. While female-female mating competition has been demonstrated in some pipefishes, all seahorses (genus Hippocampus ) studied to date have been found to have conventional sex roles with greater …
Community-managed, no-take marine reserves are increasingly promoted as a simple, precautionary measure to conserve biodiversity and sustain coral reef fisheries. However, we need to demonstrate the effects of such reserves to those affected by the loss of potential fishing grounds and the wider scientific community. We surveyed changes in fish communities in five small marine …
Great ideas can pop open whole new vistas. And they can come in many forms. They can be as big and sweeping as a new business model or as focused as a single piece of equipment. What’s key is that they are leverage points that have the potential to turn tides. Saving the world’s oceans …
The presence or absence of skin filaments is an unreliable character for identifying European seahorses. Growth of skin filaments on Hippocampus guttulatus coincides with maturation, while presence on Hippocampus hippocampus is highly variable. Multiple morphological traits including snout, head and trunk shape should be used for identification. Curtis, J.M.R. (2006). A case of mistaken identity: …
Tropical shrimp trawling results in large amounts of highly diverse, non-target bycatch. We assessed the incidental catch of seahorses from shrimp trawls in central Vietnam to investigate the effects of fishing on an example group of small fishes that are potentially vulnerable and economically important. We used logbooks and catch landings surveys to quantify seahorse …
Keeping fish in home aquaria is one of the most popular hobbies globally. The United States is the largest single market for aquarium fish (Walton 1994; Wood 2001). An estimated 11% of all U.S. households with pets keep fish (Tlusty 2002), a level similar to that in Australia, the UK, and probably in many other …
Fish species are used globally for fundamental research, product and environmental testing, and education, but this use has not hitherto been documented. The number of fish used for research and education in North America currently represents approximately one-quarter of all animal use for these purposes; only mice are used in higher numbers. Data from the …
Seahorses, together with the pipefishes (Family Syngnathidae), are the only vertebrates in which embryonic development takes place within a specialised body compartment, the brood pouch, of the male instead of the female. Embryos develop in close association with the brood pouch epithelium in a manner that bears some resemblance to embryo-placental relationships in mammals. We …
Errors in visible implant elastomer (VIE) color determination may exert stronger influences on mark–recapture data quality than poor tag visibility and tag loss. I applied individual VIE tags to 567 wild long-snouted seahorses Hippocampus guttulatus using four fluorescent colors (red, orange, green, and yellow). Given VIE tag data were compared with tag data recorded by …