Ichthyology - Research and News

. O. Wiley and C. R. Robins are currently working to develop the FISHNET prototype system, a predictive data network for fish biodiversity. This project is designed to provide access to fish biodiversity data across the Internet. FISHNET is a distributed information system that allows investigators to query the databases of partner institutions and agencies. The ultimate goal of FISHNET is to link the existing information now in the world's museums into a single coherent information system, which will be accessible to researchers worldwide via the World Wide Web. These data can be used for a wide variety of applications (e.g., studying biogeographic and ecological aspects of fishes on a macroscopic scale). This project is being funded by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant (DEB-9985737) to E. O. Wiley, C. R. Robins, A. T. Peterson (Division of Ornithology), and D. A. Vieglais (Division of Informatics).

Update (5 July 2000): The FISHNET project has been awarded $500,000 by the Census of Marine Life, a program administered by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program and funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a consortium of federal agencies including the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. The prototype system currently links data on over 40 million fish specimens housed in 21 museums nationwide.

aculty curators in the Division of Ichthyology are currently involved in studies of the phylogenetic relationships of the acanthomorph fishes using DNA sequence data. The Acanthomorpha contains well over half of the diversity of ray-finned fishes and the higher-level phylogenetic relationships of these fishes are unclear. A series of studies by staff and students examining the higher-level relationships of the Acanthomorpha, the Atherinomorpha, the Lampridiformes, the Paracanthopterygii, the Scorpaeniformes, the Pleuronectiformes, and the Acanthuroidei are in progress. The research is supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to E. O. Wiley and G. D. Johnson (U. S. National Museum).

ur new collection manager, Andy Bentley, started work on Monday, 8 January 2001. He comes to us from the J. L. B. Smith Institute of Ichthyology in Grahamstown, South Africa. Welcome to Kansas, Andy.

he 80th Annual Meetings of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists (ASIH) were held in La Paz, Baja California Sur, Mexico this year from 14-20 June 2000. Faculty curator, E. O. Wiley, and two graduate students, M. J. Grose and K. L. Tang, attended and gave talks at the meetings. Click here to view a photo gallery of our trip to La Paz.

The sandy beaches and clear waters off La Paz in the Sea of Cortez.

he FISHNET project has been awarded $500,000 by the Census of Marine Life, a program administered by the National Oceanographic Partnership Program and funded in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and a consortium of federal agencies including the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. The prototype system currently links data on over 40 million fish specimens housed in 21 museums nationwide.

ur former collection manager, K. A. Shaw-Moots, relocated to Saipan, Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands in the South Pacific, on April 14, 2000. She then took up a Postdoc appointment at the South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity under Phil Heemstra studying Sygnathid phylogenetics. If you need to contact her she can be reached at the following address:

Kate Shaw-Moots
South African Institute for Aquatic Biodiversity
Private Bag 1015
Grahamstown, 6140, South Africa
k.moots@ru.ac.za

n February 2000, E. O. Wiley attended the International Symposium on Diversity of Fishes in Tokyo, Japan. He presented a talk entitled "Teleost Fishes and Phylogenetics." The symposium commemorated the tenth anniversary of His Majesty the Emperor's Enthronement and was sponsored by the Ocean Research Institute (University of Tokyo), the National Science Museum (Tokyo), and the Ichthyological Society of Japan. The symposium included presentations by ichthyologists from Japan, Sweden, Australia, China, Malaysia, Canada, and the United States. The Emperor of Japan attended several of the sessions. While in Tokyo, Dr. Wiley visited the Tsukiji fish market (see photo) and tried fugu (the potentially deadly pufferfish). Following the symposium, he traveled to Kyoto University, where he presented a talk entitled "Using Distributed Information Systems in Biodiversity and Evolution." In addition to Tokyo and Kyoto, he also traveled to Nara and Osaka, where he had the opportunity to observe the feeding of the whale shark at the Osaka Aquarium.

Tsukiji fish market - fishmongers preparing a tuna.
(photo courtesy of N. I. Holcroft)

rom December 1997 to January 1998, curator emeritus C. R. Robins took part in an expedition to explore uncharted waters off of the coast of Cuba. The entire voyage was documented by filmmakers from the Discovery Channel. The footage that resulted from that trip, which includes many rare and interesting new fish species, has been made into a Discovery Channel presentation, Forbidden Depths. The two-hour special premiered on June 6, 1999. C. R. Robins is featured on the television show as well as the Forbidden Depths web page, where he is described as a "gentle professorial type," that's him on the far right in the accompanying photograph (photo and caption taken from the Discovery Channel Online).

McCosker, Gilmore and Robins (left to right) pull the Baby Whaler onto the deserted shore of Cayo Rosario.

he Ichthyology class (Biology 592/792), taught by Drs. E. O. Wiley and K. A. Shaw, with teaching assistants, C. Fielitz, M. J. Grose, and K. L. Tang, went to Cherokee County in southeastern Kansas to collect fishes. The fish fauna in southeastern Kansas is Ozarkian and distinct from the fishes found in the rest of Kansas. The trip involved 11 students and lasted two days, September 11-12, 1998. Students learned fish collection techniques such as seining and electroshocking, which can be seen below. Collections were made at two separate localities near Galena, KS: Shoal Creek and Spring River. At Shoal Creek, collections were made both during the day and at night to allow students to compare differences in species composition and abundance. Pictures from the trip can be viewed in more detail by clicking on the thumbnails below (all photographs are courtesy of J. B. Pramuk).

Etheostoma spectabile (courtesy of Garold W. Sneegas)

he public exhibits of the University of Kansas Natural History Museum are considered one of the foremost tourist attractions in the state of Kansas. Recently, the fish exhibit on the sixth floor has undergone significant renovation due to the activities of T. Swearingen and K. A. Shaw (collection manager of the Division of Ichthyology). The exhibit includes four large aquaria housing live Kansas fishes and a display of fish photographs provided by Garold W. Sneegas of Aquatic Kansas Images. A temporary exhibit featuring the aquatic photographs of Garold W. Sneegas was on display on the fifth floor during the first part of 1998.