Fishy Families
Image credit: Nick Hobgood, CC BY-SA 3.0, Image Cropped
Tag Archives: fish
Bee-reaucracy
Fun fact, bees are now officially fish – well at least in the eyes of Californian Endangered Species law anyway. The reason for this is not people having never seen a fish before, instead it’s down to an odd case of semantics. The original legislation that was put in place for the protection of endangered animals in California defined ‘fish’ as to include invertebrates (which is ironic as ‘fish’ in the taxonomic sense are actually vertebrates). This means that as bees have no actual backbones (despite being a backbone to ecosystem function), they can actually be classified as ‘fish’…
Makes perfect sense right?
This little loophole has allowed the Californian Fish and Game Commission to challenge the interpretation of the original species protection law to include bees under its protection. So although bees are still insects I’m sure they would be more than happy to call themselves ‘fish’ if it means that they will be afforded laws that will allow them to be classified as threatened species and be protected under the state’s endangered species act. They might have to take some swimming lessons first though!
Read More: California bees can legally be fish and have the same protections, a court has ruled
Tanya Strydom is a PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal, mostly focusing on how we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence in ecology. Current research interests include (but are not limited to) predicting ecological networks, the role species traits and scale in ecological networks, general computer (and maths) geekiness, and a (seemingly) ever growing list of side projects. Tweets (sometimes related to actual science) can be found @TanyaS_08.
The Lazy Bird Gets the Worm
A fine-scale analysis reveals microgeographic hotspots maximizing infection rate between a parasite and its fish host (2021) Mathieu-Bégné et al., Functional Ecology, https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.13967
Image credit: Viridiflavus via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Crux
Interactions between hosts and parasites can be broken down into two broad stages: the encounter filter and the compatibility filter. The encounter filter determines whether a parasite actually comes in contact with a host, through either a spatial or temporal overlap. After the encounter filter comes the compatibility filter, the stage at which a parasite either successfully infects a host and takes the resources needed, or is successfully repelled by the host. Though the encounter filter must come before the compatibility filter, most studies tend to focus on the compatibility filter. Yet for a parasite to successfully encounter a host, many obstacles must first be overcome.
Parasites tend to be very small, and hosts tend to be rare. Furthermore, many hosts move around the environment and/or are only available to a parasite at specific times of the year. Finally, in many cases the environment that a single host can occupy is huge. With all of these difficulties facing parasites, it is not surprising that they have evolved many different strategies to effectively find hosts.
However, some species don’t appear to display these strategies. For them to succeed, it is possible that they distribute themselves in a non-random (see Did You Know?) fashion in the environment, clumping together to form “hot-spots” of infection. Other studies have investigated this “hot-spot” phenomenon before, but tended to focus on larger spatial scales, anywhere from hundreds to thousands of meters. Today’s authors wanted to understand if investigations at much smaller spatial scales (i.e., ~10 meters or less) could provide further insight into the spatial aggregation of parasites.
Read moreCatfished
First, to clear the air, yes we know catfish don’t have cat ears but he’s on his way to a masquerade ball!
Second, it comes highly recommended that you check out the entire thread that inspired this comic (see below) because mussels are absolute legends when it comes to making lures to, well, lure in some unsuspecting fishies.
Tanya Strydom is a PhD candidate at the Université de Montréal, mostly focusing on how we can use machine learning and artificial intelligence in ecology. Current research interests include (but are not limited to) predicting ecological networks, the role species traits and scale in ecological networks, general computer (and maths) geekiness, and a (seemingly) ever growing list of side projects. Tweets (sometimes related to actual science) can be found @TanyaS_08.
Started at the Bottom, Now We’re Here…
Predicting how climate change threatens the prey base of Arctic marine predators, Florko et al., 2021 Ecology Letters. https://doi.org/10.1111/ele.13866
Image credit: Kingfisher, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Crux
We are all (unfortunately) very familiar with the effects of climate change on arctic ecosystems. Horrifying images of polar bears on small blocks of ice and the shrinking polar ice caps are but two of the many results of a warming climate, yet a great deal of the work in the realm has focused on the the charismatic, apex species (like the aforementioned polar bear). These are obviously important things to consider, but it is also necessary to look into the effects of climate change on the lower positions within food webs, as any change to these organisms and processes are likely to cascade upwards to effect the upper trophic levels (like our friend the polar bear).
Hudson Bay in North America is one such area impacted by our warming climate. Due to the changes in temperatures, the energy flowing through ecosystems has shifted away from away from species living in the ice and on the bottom. As a result pelagic (free-swimming) species are favored over benthic species (those living on the bottom of the bay), which alters the rest of the food web itself. Specifically, the fish that feed on pelagic species are increasing, while those that feed on benthic species are decreasing. Today’s authors wanted to understand how these changes in fish numbers are will affect Arctic predators, namely the ringed seal (Pusa hispida).
Read moreTrash Talk
When the blokes are at the pub after a long day out by the water and bragging (overexaggerating) about their ‘big catch’ have you ever noticed that (despite the variation in the tallness of the tale) all the fish look the same? And no, its not that all fish look the same (a lot of fish species do not actually look like the ‘typical’ fish that you expect) but more as a result of a long history of colonialist tastes influencing what is considered a desirable fish for sport fishing (spoiler: they look more similar to species you would expect to find in Europe).
This has resulted in any non-European looking fish being labelled as rough/trash. Which, firstly, isn’t very nice, but also means that these species do not receive the same level of protection or consideration as their non-trashy companions – they have even been actively eradicated by some!
Kat Kerlin wrote a lovely piece in physics.org discussing this issue and how we should actively try and address this prejudice and be mindful of how colonialist thinking has shaped our view and approaches to conservation.
Marvels of the African Great Lakes: Studying Cichlids With Dr. Frederic Schedel
Africa has long been romanticized in regards to the natural world. From crocodiles snapping at wildebeest to lions lounging on the plains, the continent is packed with charismatic animals. Often slipping under the radar is the fact that Africa’s freshwater ecosystems are also teeming with stunning wildlife.
Read moreCan Pizza Affect A Bird’s Fishiness?
Fishiness of Piscine Birds Linked to Absence of Poisonous Fungi but not Pizza (2020) Stervander & Haelewaters, Oceanography and Fisheries, 12(5), DOI:10.19080/OFOAJ.2020.12.555850.
The Crux
One of the most worrying things about the global phenomena that is climate change is that we are so uncertain of its exact effects on our planet’s biodiversity. There are the more obvious questions that need to be asked, like how will warming temperatures affect species ranges, and will cold-tolerant species face significant population losses?
Yet there are other less obvious concerns out there which need to be tested. For instance, seeing as there are far more fish-like birds in Antarctica, do colder temperatures lead to birds being more fish-like? And will a warming climate therefore lead to a world devoid of fishy birds? This week’s researchers had a different theory, and used some interesting statistical techniques to test it out. The project was inspired by a particularly memorable pizza consumed by one of the researchers, in that it looked at “fishiness, birdiness, lack of fungal toxicity, and effects of prolonged heating”*.
Read moreDefining Nemo: A Deep Dive Into Taxonomy (With Kai The Fish Guy)
One of the defining moments of my childhood was a holiday around Australia in the back of a Holden Commodore. My parents drove my sister and me around the whole country, and right in the middle of the holiday we took a trip out to the Great Barrier Reef. Swimming among such a mind-blowing variety of fish species was an unforgettable experience, and one I was able to pass onto my own kid last year. We’d get back into the boat after a swim and stare at an ID card my wife had bought us, trying to figure out which of the cornucopia of dazzlingly-coloured species we had seen.
Read moreIncompetent Invaders Dilute Parasites and Alter Disease Dynamics
Guest post by Paula Tierney
Invasive freshwater fish (Leuciscus leuciscus) acts as a sink for a parasite of native brown trout Salmo trutta (2020) Tierney et al. Biological Invasions. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-020-02253-1
The Crux
From house cats to cane toads, invasive species are one of the biggest threats worldwide to native plants and wildlife, second only to habitat destruction. There are a few different definitions of an invasive species, but two consistent tenets are a) that they are a living organism spreading and forming new populations outside of their native range and b) causing some kind of damage to the native ecosystem, economy or human health. As humans move around the globe with increasing ease (these last two months aside), the spreading of invasive species is increasingly common in our globalised world.
The spread of invasive species creates new ecological interactions between native and invasive species that can impact how our native ecosystems function, including disease dynamics. One key set of interactions that can be completely changed by the introduction of the invader are that of parasites and their hosts. If development and transmission of native parasites is different in invasive hosts compared to their usual native hosts, the parasite dynamics of the whole system can be altered.
Ecology for the Masses 
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