As intermittent-flow respirometry has become a common method for the determination of resting metabolism or standard metabolic rate (SMR), this study investigated how much of the variability seen in the experiments was due to measurement error. Experiments simulated different constant oxygen consumption rates (Ṁ O2) of a fish, by continuously injecting anoxic water into a respirometer,alterin…
Salmon lice Lepeophtheirus salmonis are an ecologically and economically important parasite of wild and farmed salmon. In Scotland, Norway, and Eastern Canada,L. salmonis have developed resistance to emamectin benzoate (EMB), one of the few parasiticides available for salmon lice. Drug resistance mechanisms can be complex, potentially differing among populations and involving multiple genes wit…
The water salinization is a widespread phenomenon in the world and generally, it is accompanied by salinization of soils. This makes very hard to grow any crops because to irrigate with salt water often destroys crops and fertility of soils. To mitigate such issues, within a geographical area of Sicily involved in such problems and declared at risk of desertification, Giuseppe Ingiaimo applied …
Anguillid herpesvirus 1 (AngHV1) causes a haemorrhagic disease with increased mortality in wild and farmed European eel, Anguilla anguilla (L.) and Japanese eel Anguilla japonica, Temminck & Schlegel).Detection of AngHV1 is currently based on virus isolation in cell culture, antibody-based typing assays or conventional PCR. We developed, optimized and concisely validated a diagnostic TaqMan pro…
Cross-species transmission (CST) of bacterial pathogens has major implications for human health, livestock, and wildlife management because it determines whether control actions in one species may have subsequent effects on other potential host species. The study of bacterial transmission has benefitted from methods measuring two types of genetic variation: variable number of tandem repeats (V…
The evolutionary perspective of cancer (which origins and dynamics result from evolutionary processes) has gained significant international recognition over the past decade and generated a wave of enthusiasm among researchers. In this context,several authors proposed that insights into evolutionary and adaptation dynamics of cancers can be gained by studying the evolutionary strategies of organ…
Hybridization may be an important process interjecting variation into insect populations enabling host plant shifts and the origin of new economic pests. Here, we examine whether hybridization between the native snowberry-infesting fruit fly Rhagoletis zephyria (Snow) and the introduced quarantine pest R. pomonella (Walsh) is occurring and may aid the spread of the latter into more arid commer…
Evolutionary responses that rescue populations from extinction when drastic environmental changes occur can be friend or foe. The field of conservation biology is concerned with the survival of species in deteriorating global habitats. In medicine, in contrast, infected patients are treated with chemotherapeutic interventions,but drug resistance can compromise eradication of pathogens. These co…
We integrated the evidence for evolutionary and plastic trait changes in situ in response to climate change in freshwater invertebrates (aquatic insects and zooplankton). The synthesis on the trait changes in response to the expected reductions in hydroperiod and increases in salinity indicated little evidence for adaptive, plastic, and genetic trait changes and for local adaptation. With respe…
The resilience of populations to rapid environmental degradation is a major concern for biodiversity conservation. When environments deteriorate to lethal levels,species must evolve to adapt to the new conditions to avoid extinction. Here, we test the hypothesis that evolutionary rescue may be enabled by hybridization,because hybridization increases genetic variability. Using experimental evol…
Macroscopically visible lipid deposition varying in size from pinpoint to 8-mm diameter was found in spleens of a population of intensively farmed perch,Perca fluviatilis L. over a 24-month rearing period. Large agglomerates of adipocytes distinguishable from surrounding normal tissue occurred in all individuals with spleen lipidosis. Several affected fish presented total dystrophy of large …
The importance of evolutionary conservation – how understanding evolutionary forces can help guide conservation decisions – is widely recognized. However, the historical demography of many endangered species is unknown, despite the fact that this can have important implications for contemporary ecological processes and for extinction risk. Here, we reconstruct the population history of the …
Here, we address the morphological changes of eyed eggs of Atlantic salmon, Salmo salar L. infected with Saprolegnia from a commercial hatchery and after experimental infection. Eyed eggs infected with Saprolegnia spp. from 10 Atlantic salmon females were obtained. Egg pathology was investigated by light and scanning electron microscopy. Eggs from six of ten females were infected with S. parasi…
This study compares the critical oxygen saturation (O2crit) levels of the shiner perch Cymatogaster aggregata obtained using two different methods wherein hypoxia is induced either by the fish’s respiration (closed respirometry) or by degassing oxygen with nitrogen (intermittent-flow respirometry). Fish exhibited loss of equilibrium at a higher O2 saturation in the closed respirometry method …
Variation in life-history traits can have major impacts on the ecological and evolutionary responses of populations to environmental change. Life-history variation often results from trade-offs that arise because individuals have a limited pool of resources to allocate among traits. However, human activities are increasing the availability of many once-limited resources, such as nitrogen and ph…
Fish stock productivity, and thereby sensitivity to harvesting, depends on physical (e.g. ocean climate) and biological (e.g. prey availability, competition and predation) processes in the ecosystem. The combined impacts of such ecosystem processes and fisheries have lead to stock collapses across the world. While traditional fisheries management focuses on harvest rates and stock biomass, inco…
Lyme borreliosis is rapidly emerging in Canada, and climate change is likely a key driver of the northern spread of the disease in North America. We used field and modeling approaches to predict the risk of occurrence of Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria causing Lyme disease in North America. We combined climatic and landscape variables to model the current and future (2050) potential distribu…
The oriental fruit moth Grapholita molesta is one of the major pests of stone and pome fruit species in Brazil. Here, we applied 1226 SNPs obtained by genotyping-by-sequencing to test whether host species associations or other factors such as geographic distance structured populations of this pest. Populations from the main areas of occurrence of G. molesta were sampled principally from peach a…
Urbanization profoundly impacts animal populations by causing isolation,increased susceptibility to disease, and exposure to toxicants. Genetic effects include reduced effective population size, increased population substructure, and decreased adaptive potential. We investigated the influence that urbanization and a disease epizootic had on the population genetics of bobcats (Lynx rufus) distri…
Environmental sex reversal (ESR), whereby environmental effects (e.g. exogenous chemicals) override genetic sex determination, is a commonly used technique in aquaculture and physiology research. We performed a systematic review and metaanalyses of the literature that compares the sperm characteristics of masculinized genotypic females to wild-type males. We detected no mean differences between…
In Australia, the rabbit haemorrhagic disease virus (RHDV) has been used since 1996 to reduce numbers of introduced European rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus)which have a devastating impact on the native Australian environment. RHDV causes regular, short disease outbreaks, but little is known about how the virus persists and survives between epidemics. We examined the initial spread of RHDV to s…
Both natural animal populations and those in captivity are subject to evolutionary forces. Evolutionary changes to captive populations may be an important, but poorly understood, factor that can affect the sustainability of these populations. The importance of maintaining the evolutionary integrity of zoo populations,especially those that are used for conservation efforts including reintroducti…
To forecast the responses of species to future climate change, an understanding of the ability of species to adapt to long-term shifts in temperature is crucial. We present a review on evolutionary adaptation and phenotypic plasticity of temperature-related traits in terrestrial invertebrates. The evidence for adaptive evolution in melanization is good, but we caution that genetic determinatio…
A central question in evolutionary biology is how interactions between organisms and the environment shape genetic differentiation. The pathogen Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) has caused variable population declines in the lowland leopard frog (Lithobates yavapaiensis); thus, disease has potentially shaped, or been shaped by, host genetic diversity. Environmental factors can also influence…
The importance of evolution in enhancing the invasiveness of species is not well understood, especially in animals. To evaluate evolution in crayfish invasions,we tested for differences in growth rate, survival, and response to predators between native and invaded range populations of rusty crayfish (Orconectes rusticus). We hypothesized that low conspecific densities during introductions into …
Compared to natural selection, domestication implies a dramatic change in traits linked to fitness. A number of traits conferring fitness in the wild might be detrimental under domestication, and domesticated species typically differ from their ancestors in a set of traits known as the domestication syndrome. Specifically,trade-offs between growth and reproduction are well established across th…
Flowering time divergence can be a crucial component of reproductive isolation between sympatric populations, but few studies have quantified its actual contribution to the reduction of gene flow. In this study, we aimed at estimating pollen-mediated gene flow between cultivated sunflower and a weedy conspecific sunflower population growing in the same field and at quantifying, how it is affect…
Metabolic rate is one of the most widely measured physiological traits in animals and may be influenced by both endogenous (e.g. body mass) and exogenous factors (e.g. oxygen availability and temperature). Standard metabolic rate (SMR) and maximum metabolic rate (MMR) are two fundamental physiological variables providing the floor and ceiling in aerobic energy metabolism. The total amount of en…
In light of an increasing trend in fish biology towards using static respirometry techniques without the inclusion of a mixing mechanism and without accurately accounting for the influence of microbial (background) respiration, this paper quantifies the effect of these approaches on the oxygen consumption rates ( ˙MO2) measured from juvenile barramundi Lates calcarifer (mean±s.e. mass=20⋅31…
Recently, genetic strategies aimed at controlling populations of disease-vectoring mosquitoes have received considerable attention as alternatives to traditional measures. Theoretical studies have shown that female-killing (FK), antipathogen m(AP), and reduce and replace (R&R) strategies can each decrease the number competent vectors. In this study, we utilize a mathematical model to evaluate i…
I summarize marine studies on plastic versus adaptive responses to global change. Due to the lack of time series, this review focuses largely on the potential for adaptive evolution in marine animals and plants. The approaches were mainly synchronic comparisons of phenotypically divergent populations, substituting spatial contrasts in temperature or CO2 environments for temporal changes, or in …
Interspecific hybridization occurs in nature but can also be caused by human actions. It often leads to infertile or fertile hybrids that exclude one parental genome during gametogenesis, escaping genetic recombination and ntrogression. The threat that genome-exclusion hybridization might represent on parental species is poorly understood, especially when invasive species are involved. Here, we…
The microsporidian Loma morhua infects Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua) in the wild and in culture and results in the formation of xenomas within the gill filaments, heart and spleen. Given the importance of the two former organs to metabolic capacity and thermal tolerance, the cardiorespiratory performance of cod with a naturally acquired infection of Loma was measured during an acute temperatur…
Artemisinin-based drugs are the front-line weapon in the treatment of human malaria cases, but there is concern that recent reports of slow clearing infections may signal developing resistance to treatment. In the absence of molecular markers for resistance, current efforts to monitor drug efficacy are based on the rate at which parasites are cleared from infections. However, some knowledge of …
While nonanadromous males (stream-resident and/or mature male parr) contribute to reproduction in anadromous salmonids, little is known about their impacts on key population genetic parameters. Here, we evaluated the contribution of Atlantic salmon mature male parr to the effective number of breeders (Nb) using both demographic (variance in reproductive success) and genetic (linkage disequilibr…
Understanding the effects of inbreeding and genetic drift within populations and hybridization between genetically differentiated populations is important for many basic and applied questions in ecology and evolutionary biology. The magnitudes and even the directions of these effects can be influenced by various factors,especially by the current and historical population size (i.e. inbreeding r…
Metabolic costs can be extremely high in marine fish larvae and gaining reliable estimates of the effects of intrinsic and extrinsic factors on those costs is important to understand environmental constraints on early growth and survival. This review provides an historical perspective of measurements of larval marine fish respiration (O2 consumption) including the methods (Winkler, manometric, …
Humans have exploited the earth’s metal resources for thousands of years leaving behind a legacy of toxic metal contamination and poor water quality. The southwest of England provides a well-defined example, with a rich history of metal mining dating to the Bronze Age. Mine water washout continues to negatively impact water quality across the region where brown trout (Salmo trutta L.) populat…
Predicting the geographic spread of wildlife epidemics requires knowledge about the movement patterns of disease hosts or vectors. The field of landscape genetics provides valuable approaches to study dispersal indirectly, which in turn may be used to understand patterns of disease spread. Here, we applied landscape genetic analyses and spatially explicit models to identify the potential path o…
Remnant areas hosting natural vegetation in agricultural landscapes can impact the disease epidemiology and evolutionary dynamics of crop pathogens. However,the potential consequences for crop diseases of the composition, the spatial configuration and the persistence time of the agro-ecological interface – the area where crops and remnant vegetation are in contact – have been poorly studied…
Domestication has resulted in selection upon seed traits found in wild populations,yet crop-wild hybrids retain some aspects of both parental phenotypes. Seed fates of germination, dormancy, and mortality can influence the success of crop allele introgression in crop-wild hybrid zones, especially if crop alleles or crop-imparted seed coverings result in out-of-season germination. We performed …
The detection rates of stationary acoustic transmitters deployed at three depths on two Atlantic salmon Salmo salar cage farms for c. 2 months were investigated. Deployment depth, time of day, day of the year and specific incidences at the farm substantially affected the rate of signal detection by the receiver. of Fish Biology published on behalf of The Fisheries Society of the British Isles…
Anthropogenic habitat fragmentation has altered the distribution and population sizes in many organisms worldwide. For this reason, understanding the demographic and genetic consequences of this process is necessary to predict the fate of populations and establish management practices aimed to ensure their viability. In this study, we analyse whether the spatial configuration of remnant semina…
Structural environmental enrichment, that is, a deliberate addition of physical complexity to the rearing environment, is sometimes utilized to reduce the expression of the undesirable traits that fish develop in captivity. Increasing demands and regulations regarding usage of enrichment to promote fish welfare also make investigations on the effects of enrichment important. Here, we sythesize …
The relationship between genetic variation and phenotypic traits is fundamental to the study and management of natural populations. Such relationships often are investigated by assessing correlations between phenotypic traits and heterozygosity or genetic differentiation. Using an extensive data set compiled from freeranging mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), we combined genetic and ecological da…
Maximum (aerobic) metabolic rate (MMR) is defined here as the maximum rate of oxygen consumption (Ṁ O2max) that a fish can achieve at a given temperature under any ecologically relevant circumstance. Different techniques exist for eliciting MMR of fishes, of which swim-flume respirometry (critical swimming speed tests and burst-swimming protocols) and exhaustive chases are the most common. Av…
Streptococcus parauberis is an increasing threat to aquaculture of olive flounder, Paralichthys olivaceus Temminck & Schlegel, in South Korea. We developed a real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method using the TaqMan probe assay to detect and quantify S. parauberis by targeting the gyrB gene sequences, which are effective for molecular analysis of the genus Streptococcus. Our real-time …
Accounting for energy use by fishes has been taking place for over 200 years. The original, and continuing gold standard for measuring energy use in terrestrial animals, is to account for the waste heat produced by all reactions of metabolism, a process referred to as direct calorimetry. Direct calorimetry is not easy or convenient in terrestrial animals and is extremely difficult in aquatic an…
The problem of ecosystem overfishing has mostly focused on the function of forage fish as prey for apex predators. Here, I consider another ecosystem function, herbivory,that affects habitat quality. Parrotfish are an important fishery in many parts of the Caribbean and the dominant herbivorous fish on its coral reefs. Herbivory helps to control macroalgae which compete with coral and can impe…
Invasion success may be expected to increase with residence time (i.e., time since first introduction) and secondary releases (i.e., those that follow the original introduction), but this has rarely been tested in natural fish populations. We compared genetic and phenotypic divergence in rainbow trout and brown trout in Chile and the Falkland Islands to test the prediction that adaptive diverge…