Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 30 of 41

Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

South Coast Offshore Crustacean Resource Of Western Australia Harvest Strategy, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia Sep 2023

South Coast Offshore Crustacean Resource Of Western Australia Harvest Strategy, Department Of Primary Industries And Regional Development, Western Australia

Fisheries management papers

Harvest strategies for aquatic resources in Western Australia (WA) that are managed by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD, the Department) are formal documents that ensures decision-making processes are consistent with the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD; Fletcher 2002) and Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management (EBFM; Fletcher et al. 2012). The objectives of ESD are reflected in the objects of the Fish Resources Management Act 1994 (FRMA) and the Aquatic Resources Management Act 2016 (ARMA), which is anticipated replace the FRMA once enacted. At this point, the Fish Resources Management Regulations 1995 (FRMR) is also anticipated to …


Otoliths Of South-Western Australian Fish: A Photographic Catalogue, Chris Dowling, Kim Smith, Elain Lek, Joshua Brown Sep 2021

Otoliths Of South-Western Australian Fish: A Photographic Catalogue, Chris Dowling, Kim Smith, Elain Lek, Joshua Brown

Fisheries research reports

Due to the species-specific nature of otoliths and given they are often the only part of the fish preserved when fish die, otolith catalogues can be used in numerous applications, such as diet studies in fish eating animals, including pinnipeds, fish and sea birds; archaeological purposes such as reconstructing indigenous people’s diets from otoliths found in middens or evolutionary history of fish species by comparing fossilized otoliths. Given the unique mixture of subtropical and temperate fish, including many endemic species that occur off the southwest corner of WA having a catalogue for this area is extremely important for people working …


Otoliths Of South-Western Australian Fish: A Photographic Catalogue, Chris Dowling, Kim Smith, Elaine Lek, Joshua Brown Sep 2021

Otoliths Of South-Western Australian Fish: A Photographic Catalogue, Chris Dowling, Kim Smith, Elaine Lek, Joshua Brown

Fisheries research reports

Due to the species-specific nature of otoliths and given they are often the only part of the fish preserved when fish die, otolith catalogues can be used in numerous applications, such as diet studies in fish eating animals, including pinnipeds, fish and sea birds; archaeological purposes such as reconstructing indigenous people’s diets from otoliths found in middens or evolutionary history of fish species by comparing fossilized otoliths. Given the unique mixture of subtropical and temperate fish, including many endemic species that occur off the southwest corner of WA having a catalogue for this area is extremely important for people working …


Using Principles Of Seascape Ecology To Consider Relationships Between Spatial Patterning And Mobile Marine Vertebrates In A Seagrass-Mangrove Ecotone In Bimini, Bahamas, Sarah Rebecca Taylor Driscoll Jan 2021

Using Principles Of Seascape Ecology To Consider Relationships Between Spatial Patterning And Mobile Marine Vertebrates In A Seagrass-Mangrove Ecotone In Bimini, Bahamas, Sarah Rebecca Taylor Driscoll

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Seagrass meadows and mangrove forests are ecologically and economically important systems that are increasingly threatened by anthropogenic activity. This study used a non-invasive method, baited remote underwater video systems (BRUVS), to observe mobile marine vertebrates in the seagrass-mangrove ecotone in North and South Bimini, the only area where mangroves remain in the northwestern Bahamas. An extensive area of mangroves and seagrass was removed for coastal development in North Bimini, where a marine protected area, the North Bimini Marine Reserve (NBMR), has been under consideration for decades. This research applied principles of seascape ecology to assess species abundance, diversity, and richness …


Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances In Consumable Fish & Surface Waters Near Sites Using Aqueous Film-Forming Foams: Potential Risks, Suggested Regulatory Standards And Policy Approaches For Massachusetts, Tachalla Gibeau May 2020

Per- And Polyfluoroalkyl Substances In Consumable Fish & Surface Waters Near Sites Using Aqueous Film-Forming Foams: Potential Risks, Suggested Regulatory Standards And Policy Approaches For Massachusetts, Tachalla Gibeau

International Development, Community and Environment (IDCE)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are emerging contaminants of concern with potential for adverse effects on both human and environmental health. Hence, long-chain PFAS compounds used in legacy aqueous film-forming foams (AFFFs) are being phased out, resulting in the stockpiling of them at various commercial installations. PFAS contaminated runoff from these facilities has the potential to contaminate nearby surface water bodies and the fish inhabiting them. An analytical approach was used to identify surface water bodies in Massachusetts that are habitats for fish susceptible to PFAS contamination and where said fish are also popularly consumed by locals – thereby representing …


Sampling The Local Fare: Fishes At The Sam Israel House Pit (45gr76), Soap Lake, Washington, Adam Fruge Jan 2020

Sampling The Local Fare: Fishes At The Sam Israel House Pit (45gr76), Soap Lake, Washington, Adam Fruge

All Master's Theses

The Sam Israel site is a precontact archaeological complex with numerous fish bones at the north end of Soap Lake, Washington. Excavated in 1976, the fish remains recovered from there were never fully analyzed prior to this research. Since this inland Columbia Plateau site had thousands of fish bones, it contained untapped potential for our understanding of ancient local fish procurement. As such, I conducted a detailed analysis of 2,862 fish bone specimens from the Sam Israel House Pit locus to: study a larger sample of fish bones in greater detail than was done before; compare the distribution of fishes …


Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown Sep 2019

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown

Lynne Sneddon, PhD

Recent empirical studies have reported evidence that many aquatic species, including fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, have the capacity for nociception and pain, and that their welfare should be taken into consideration. Some sceptics, rejecting the precautionary principle, have denied that any study demonstrates pain or other aspects of sentience in fish. This target article discusses some of the scientific shortcomings of these critiques through a detailed analysis of a study exploring nociception and analgesia in larval zebrafish.


Does Detection Range Matter For Inferring Social Networks In A Benthic Shark Using Acoustic Telemetry?, Johann Mourier, Nathan Charles Bass, Tristan L. Guttridge, Joanna Day, Culum Brown Aug 2019

Does Detection Range Matter For Inferring Social Networks In A Benthic Shark Using Acoustic Telemetry?, Johann Mourier, Nathan Charles Bass, Tristan L. Guttridge, Joanna Day, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Accurately estimating contacts between animals can be critical in ecological studies such as examining social structure, predator–prey interactions or transmission of information and disease. While biotelemetry has been used successfully for such studies in terrestrial systems, it is still under development in the aquatic environment. Acoustic telemetry represents an attractive tool to investigate spatio-temporal behaviour of marine fish and has recently been suggested for monitoring underwater animal interactions. To evaluate the effectiveness of acoustic telemetry in recording interindividual contacts, we compared co-occurrence matrices deduced from three types of acoustic receivers varying in detection range in a benthic shark species. Our …


Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown Aug 2019

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Recent empirical studies have reported evidence that many aquatic species, including fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, have the capacity for nociception and pain, and that their welfare should be taken into consideration. Some sceptics, rejecting the precautionary principle, have denied that any study demonstrates pain or other aspects of sentience in fish. This target article discusses some of the scientific shortcomings of these critiques through a detailed analysis of a study exploring nociception and analgesia in larval zebrafish.


If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor Jan 2018

If It Looks Like A Duck: Fish Fit The Criteria For Pain Perception, Julia E. Meyers-Manor

Animal Sentience

Whereas we have denied the experience of pain to animals, including human babies, the evidence is becoming clearer that animals across a variety of species have the capacity to feel pain (Bellieni, 2012). As converging findings are collected from pain studies and the study of cognition, it is becoming harder to deny that fish are among the species that do feel pain.


Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff Jan 2018

Pain In Fish: Evidence From Peripheral Nociceptors To Pallial Processing, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

The target article by Sneddon et al. (2018) presents convincing behavioral and pharmacological evidence that ray-finned fish consciously perceive noxious stimuli as painful. One objection to this interpretation of the evidence is that the fish nervous system is not complex enough to support the conscious experience of pain. Data that contradict this objection are presented in this commentary. The neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the fish nervous system from the peripheral nerves to the pallium is able to support the sentient appreciation of pain.


Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown Jan 2018

Fish Sentience Denial: Muddying The Waters, Lynne U. Sneddon, Javier Lopez-Luna, David C.C. Wolfenden, Matthew C. Leach, Ana M. Valentim, Peter J. Steenbergen, Nabila Bardine, Amanda D. Currie, Donald M. Broom, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

Recent empirical studies have reported evidence that many aquatic species, including fish, cephalopods and crustaceans, have the capacity for nociception and pain, and that their welfare should be taken into consideration. Some sceptics, rejecting the precautionary principle, have denied that any study demonstrates pain or other aspects of sentience in fish. This target article discusses some of the scientific shortcomings of these critiques through a detailed analysis of a study exploring nociception and analgesia in larval zebrafish.


Degrees Of Sentience?, Jonathan Birch Jan 2018

Degrees Of Sentience?, Jonathan Birch

Animal Sentience

I focus on the possibility of sentience in zebrafish larvae. The evidence here prompts two intuitive reactions that are difficult to reconcile: the reaction that larvae, if sentient, should be protected in some way, and the reaction that larvae, if capable of nociception, should be used as replacements for adults. Both reactions are reasonable, but they can be reconciled only by constructing a framework for assigning degrees of protection in proportion to degrees of sentience.


Fish Sentience, Consciousness, And Ai, Ila France Porcher Jan 2018

Fish Sentience, Consciousness, And Ai, Ila France Porcher

Animal Sentience

The systematic criticism of articles providing evidence that fish and invertebrates can feel pain is discussed. Beliefs are known to be stronger than evidence in the human mind, and could generate this outcry, while from another perspective, the criticisms appear as a territorial move by fishermen against a perceived threat to their domain. The scientific inconsistency in which consciousness is granted to machines but not to fish and invertebrates, purely due to political bias, is pointed out. No basis exists for denying sentience to any life form as long as science is ignorant of the nature and source of consciousness.


Defining Denial And Sentient Seafood, Jennifer Jacquet Jan 2018

Defining Denial And Sentient Seafood, Jennifer Jacquet

Animal Sentience

Sneddon et al. address the scientists who reject the empirical evidence on fish sentience, calling them “sceptics” and their work “denial”. This is the first article to frame the question of fish sentience in these terms, and it provides an obvious opening for social science and humanities research in the science of fish sentience. It is also worth asking what practical changes in the lives of fish might arise from the mounting evidence of their sentience. I suggest that the relationship between sentience and our sense of moral obligation is not as clear as we often assume.


Denialism And Muddying The Water Or Organized Skepticism And Clarity? That Is The Question, Ben Diggles, Howard I. Browman Jan 2018

Denialism And Muddying The Water Or Organized Skepticism And Clarity? That Is The Question, Ben Diggles, Howard I. Browman

Animal Sentience

The research being commented on here has been criticized and defended in journals. Sneddon et al. (2018) add nothing substantive. We have nothing further to add. Readers are referred to Diggles (2018) and to Browman et al. (2018) for a detailed assessment.


Defining Pain And Painful Sentience In Animals, Edgar T. Walters Jan 2018

Defining Pain And Painful Sentience In Animals, Edgar T. Walters

Animal Sentience

Sentience is essential to most definitions of pain, including a detailed definition invoked by Sneddon et al. to argue that adult and perhaps larval fish feel pain. Because proving painful sentience in non-human animals is not feasible, multiple lines of indirect evidence are needed to implicate pain. This commentary examines the list of 17 criteria used by Sneddon et al. to conclude that fish have conscious pain. The criteria include tests of nociceptive, motivational, and cognitive properties useful for revealing pain-like states that can be understood biologically and be related evolutionarily to human pain. However, additional research is needed to …


Sentience In Fishes: More On The Evidence, Michael L. Woodruff Jan 2018

Sentience In Fishes: More On The Evidence, Michael L. Woodruff

Animal Sentience

In my target article, I argued that the brains of ray-finned fishes of the teleost subclass (Actinopterygii) are sufficiently complex to support sentience — that these fishes have subjective awareness of interoceptive and exteroceptive sense experience. Extending previous theories centered on the tectum, I focused on the organization of the fish pallium. In this Response to the commentaries, I clarify that I do not propose that the fish pallium is, or must be, homologous to the mammalian neocortex to play a role in sentience. Some form of a functionalist approach to explaining the neural basis of sentience across taxa is …


Does Detection Range Matter For Inferring Social Networks In A Benthic Shark Using Acoustic Telemetry?, Johann Mourier, Nathan Charles Bass, Tristan L. Guttridge, Joanna Day, Culum Brown Sep 2017

Does Detection Range Matter For Inferring Social Networks In A Benthic Shark Using Acoustic Telemetry?, Johann Mourier, Nathan Charles Bass, Tristan L. Guttridge, Joanna Day, Culum Brown

Social Behavior Collection

Accurately estimating contacts between animals can be critical in ecological studies such as examining social structure, predator–prey interactions or transmission of information and disease. While biotelemetry has been used successfully for such studies in terrestrial systems, it is still under development in the aquatic environment. Acoustic telemetry represents an attractive tool to investigate spatio-temporal behaviour of marine fish and has recently been suggested for monitoring underwater animal interactions. To evaluate the effectiveness of acoustic telemetry in recording interindividual contacts, we compared co-occurrence matrices deduced from three types of acoustic receivers varying in detection range in a benthic shark species. Our …


Examining Movement And Habitat Selection Of Everglades Fishes In Response To Seasonal Water Levels, Gregory J. Hill Mar 2017

Examining Movement And Habitat Selection Of Everglades Fishes In Response To Seasonal Water Levels, Gregory J. Hill

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fish distribution patterns and seasonal habitat use play a key role in the food web dynamics of aquatic ecosystems, including the Florida Everglades. In this study I examined the fine scale habitat shifts and movements of spotted sunfish, Lepomis punctatus across varying seasons and hydrologic conditions using in-situ field enclosures and Passive Integrated Transponder (PIT) systems. Data on fish use of three dominant Everglades marsh habitats and activity level were recorded continuously from January to August, 2015. Fish were more active and had the highest use of higher elevation habitats when water levels rose during an experimental reversal in mid-April. …


Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson Jan 2017

Animal Models, Agendas And Sentience, Thomas Creson

Animal Sentience

Woodruff’s target article on teleost consciousness is a well-organized logical argument for considering the fish as a sentient being. This becomes more important for animal ethical discussion as the fish becomes a more important and legitimate animal model for investigating animal states and traits associated with higher levels of behavior such as learning and memory.


The Emotional Brain Of Fish, Sonia Rey Planellas Jan 2017

The Emotional Brain Of Fish, Sonia Rey Planellas

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) analyzes structural homologies and functional equivalences between the brains of mammals and fish to understand where sentience and social cognition might reside in teleosts. He compares neuroanatomical, neurophysiological and behavioural correlates. I discuss current advances in the study of fish cognitive abilities and emotions, and advocate an evolutionary approach to the underlying basis of sentience in teleosts.


Nagel-Ing Worries About Fish Sentience, Hugh Lafollette Jan 2017

Nagel-Ing Worries About Fish Sentience, Hugh Lafollette

Animal Sentience

Woodruff (2017) argues that teleosts’ more sophisticated behaviors make sense only if they are sentient. Moreover, their neuroanatomy, although different from mammalian, is sufficiently complex to support sentience. I answer some potential objections to Woodruff’s argument, and try to trace its moral significance. In so doing, I briefly address Birch’s (2017) target article as well.


Learning, Memory, Cognition, And The Question Of Sentience In Fish, Robert Gerlai Jan 2017

Learning, Memory, Cognition, And The Question Of Sentience In Fish, Robert Gerlai

Animal Sentience

Evolutionarily conserved features have been demonstrated at many levels of biological organization across a variety of species. Evolutionary conservation may apply to complex behavioral phenomena too. It is thus not inconceivable that a form of sentience does exist even in the lowest order vertebrate taxon, the teleosts. How similar it is to human sentience in its level of complexity or in its multidimensional features is a difficult question, especially from an experimental standpoint, given that even the definition of human sentience is debated. Woodruff attempts a Turing-like test of fish sentience, and lists numerous neuroanatomic, neurophysiological and behavioral similarities between …


Policy On The Application Of Fish Size Limits In Western Australia, Department Of Fisheries Nov 2016

Policy On The Application Of Fish Size Limits In Western Australia, Department Of Fisheries

Fisheries management papers

No abstract provided.


Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown May 2016

Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

The ecological cognition hypothesis poses that the brains and behaviours of individuals are largely shaped by the environments in which they live and the associated challenges they must overcome during their lives. Here we examine the effect of environmental complexity on relative brain size in 4 species of intertidal gobies from differing habitats. Two species were rock pool specialists that lived on spatially complex rocky shores, while the remainder lived on dynamic, but structurally simple, sandy shores. We found that rock pool-dwelling species had relatively larger brains and telencephalons in particular, while sand-dwelling species had a larger optic tectum and …


Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown May 2016

Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown

Culum Brown, PhD

Whether fish feel pain is a hot political topic. The consequences of our denial are huge given the billions of fish that are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The economic costs of changing our commercial fishery harvest practices are also likely to be great. Key outlines a structure-function analogy of pain in humans, tries to force that template on the rest of the vertebrate kingdom, and fails. His target article has so far elicited 34 commentaries from scientific experts from a broad range of disciplines; only three of these support his position. The broad consensus from the scientific community is …


Fish Pain's Burden Of Proof, Carl Safina Feb 2016

Fish Pain's Burden Of Proof, Carl Safina

Animal Sentience

A hypothesis like Key’s, that fish cannot feel pain, should really be stated as a null hypothesis — an assumption that there is no difference in the things being compared. Then evidence — including anecdotal evidence — for and against rejecting the null hypothesis can be examined and weighed. Key (2016a) has proven only that fish lack mammalian brains.


Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp Jan 2016

Brain Processes For “Good” And “Bad” Feelings: How Far Back In Evolution?, Jaak Panksepp

Animal Sentience

The question of whether fish can experience pain or any other feelings can only be resolved by neurobiologically targeted experiments. This commentary summarizes why this is essential for resolving scientific debates about consciousness in other animals, and offers specific experiments that need to be done: (i) those that evaluate the rewarding and punishing effects of specific brain regions and systems (for instance, with deep-brain stimulation); (ii) those that evaluate the capacity of animals to regulate their affective states; and (iii) those that have direct implications for human affective feelings, with specific predictions — for instance, the development of new treatments …


Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown Jan 2016

Fish Pain: An Inconvenient Truth, Culum Brown

Animal Sentience

Whether fish feel pain is a hot political topic. The consequences of our denial are huge given the billions of fish that are slaughtered annually for human consumption. The economic costs of changing our commercial fishery harvest practices are also likely to be great. Key outlines a structure-function analogy of pain in humans, tries to force that template on the rest of the vertebrate kingdom, and fails. His target article has so far elicited 34 commentaries from scientific experts from a broad range of disciplines; only three of these support his position. The broad consensus from the scientific community is …