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Conservation Of Freshwater Live-Bearing Fishes: Development Of Germplasm Repositories For Goodeids, Yue Liu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Fishes of the family Goodeidae are considered to be among the most imperiled taxa in the world. The goal of this project was to provide a foundation for development of sperm repositories for goodeids and to use them as a model to assist conservation programs for imperiled freshwater live-bearing fishes. Development of such repositories is challenging because of unusual reproductive characteristics of live-bearing fishes, such as sperm bundles, internal fertilization, and the bearing of live young. Standardized methods were established to evaluate quality-related attributes of sperm bundles. The different features between activation of free and bundled sperm were investigated and …