Statistical method for testing the neutral mutation hypothesis by DNA polymorphism.

Predation has long been implicated as a major selective force in the evolution of several morphological and behavioral characteristics of animals. The importance of predation during evolutionary ti...

Behavioral decisions made under the risk of predation: a review and prospectus

In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.

Thinking fast and slow.

http://aerg.canberra.edu.au/library/sex_general/2002_Devlin_Nagahama_sex_determination_in_fish_review.pdf

Sex determination and sex differentiation in fish: an overview of genetic, physiological, and environmental influences

Quasi-experimentation - design and analysis issues for field settings - cook,td, campbell,dt

The phylogenetic relationships among the fishes in the perciform tribe Epinephelini (Serranidae) have long been poorly understood, in large part because of the numerous taxa that must be considered and the large, circumtropical distribution of the group. In this study, genetic data from two nuclear (Tmo-4C4 and histone H3) and two mitochondrial (16S and 12S) genes were gathered from 155 serranid and acanthomorph species as a means of developing a phylogenetic hypothesis using both maximum-likelihood and -parsimony criteria. The maximum-parsimony analysis recovered 675 most parsimonious trees of length 5703 steps (CI = 0.2523, HI = 0.7477, RI = 0.6582), and the maximum-likelihood analysis recovered 1 tree at −lnLikelihood = 28279.58341. These phylogenetic hypotheses are discussed in light of previous morphological evidence to evaluate the evolutionary history of the group and their implications for the currently recognized taxonomy. Our results question the monophyly of the Serranidae, as well as the genera Cephalopholis, Epinephelus, and Mycteroperca as currently defined. The Serranidae is monophyletic only with the exclusion of the genera Acanthistius and Niphon. We propose a revised classification of the tribe Epinephelini that reflects the hypothesized shared ancestry of the group and recognizes 11 genera: Alphestes, Cephalopholis, Dermatolepis, Epinephelus, Gonioplectrus, Hyporthodus (which is resurrected for 11 species of deep-bodied groupers), Mycteroperca (including 7 species heretofore allocated to Epinephelus), Plectropomus, Saloptia, Triso, and Variola.

A molecular phylogeny of the groupers of the subfamily Epinephelinae (Serranidae) with a revised classification of the Epinephelini

Ecology of the marine fishes of cuba

Biogeography of the Tropical Eastern Pacific: distribution and phylogeny of chaenopsid fishes

Female choice and male reproductive success in the angel blenny, Coralliozetus angelica (Teleostei: Chaenopsidae)

We engaged in cooperative research with fishers and stakeholders to characterize the fine-scale, spatio-temporal characteristics of spawning behavior in an aggregating marine fish (Cynoscion othonopterus: Sciaenidae) and coincident activities of its commercial fishery in the Upper Gulf of California. Approximately 1.5–1.8 million fish are harvested annually from spawning aggregations of C. othonopterus during 21–25 days of fishing and within an area of 1,149 km2 of a biosphere reserve. Spawning and fishing are synchronized on a semi-lunar cycle, with peaks in both occurring 5 to 2 days before the new and full moon and fishing intensity and catch are highest at the spawning grounds within a no-take reserve. Results of this study demonstrate the benefits of combining GPS data loggers, fisheries data, biological surveys and cooperative research with fishers to produce spatio-temporally explicit information relevant to the science and management of fish spawning aggregations and the spatial planning of marine reserves.

/pdf/spatio-temporal-dynamics-of-a-fish-spawning-aggregation-and-1xu2etp4zi.pdf

Philip A. Hastings

Papers

A molecular phylogeny of the groupers of the subfamily Epinephelinae (Serranidae) with a revised classification of the Epinephelini

Ecology of the marine fishes of cuba

Biogeography of the Tropical Eastern Pacific: distribution and phylogeny of chaenopsid fishes

Female choice and male reproductive success in the angel blenny, Coralliozetus angelica (Teleostei: Chaenopsidae)

Spatio-temporal dynamics of a fish spawning aggregation and its fishery in the Gulf of California