Fish

In social animals living in the wild, individuals rely on their buddies to alert them if a predator is lurking.

All animals aim to balance the risk of predation against the energy investment necessary to execute an escape, to maximise the number of correct reactions (e.g. reacting to the presence of a predator) and minimise reactions to inaccurate information (e.g. reacting to harmless stimuli).

A study has shown that baby reef fishes clock in at 15 to 40 body lengths per second, making them one of the fastest youngsters around.

In contrast, baby herring swim up to two body lengths per second, while the fastest human (Olympic gold medallist Michael Phelps) manages just 1.4 body lengths per second.

So how did those tiny baby reef fishes get to be so fast so early in their lives?

Scientists have discovered that clownfish living closer to shore die sooner than their counterparts found farther offshore due to the difference in the amount of artificial-light exposure.

The more artificial light they were exposed to, the higher the mortality rate.

The study focused on the reefs around Moorea in French Polynesia. It involved exposing 42 juvenile clownfish to either artificial light at night (ALAN) or natural light (meaning, moonlight!) in the lagoon. Each of the 42 territories had a magnificent sea anemone.

Scientists have discovered that how fast the white stripes that run down the clownfish’s body develop depends on the sea anemone it lives in.

Specifically, they found out that the clownfish living in the giant carpet anemone and those living in the magnificent sea anemone develop stripe patterns (called “bars”) at different speeds as they matured from the larval to the adult stage.

The two Canadian universities are currently collaborating on the world's first large-scale study of lionfish stings. At present, there is no scientific data that has been collected on a broad scale, as to what happens to a human after they have been stung by a lionfish. 

Subject Criteria

Been stung? The scientists would like to collect the pain and symptoms you experienced after you were stung.  

This finding was based on research by a team of biologists and mathematicians from Swansea University and the University of Essex. It involved 15 three-spined stickleback fish observed individually in a fish tank containing two, three or five plants in fixed positions.

Zoologist Douglas Bastos from the National Institute of Amazonian Research in Manaus, Brazil, and his team have captured video footage of Volta’s electric eels hunting in groups of more than 100.

Coral reef fish start their lives as small, transparent larvae. After they hatch, they join a swirling sea of plankton and frequently get dispersed to different reefs due to ocean currents, waves and the wind.

In this study, the scientists did seven years of surveys focussing on the Clark’s anemonefish, measuring how the dispersal of larvae varied over the years and seasonally. They discovered that the larvae dispersal varied immensely on both these timescales.

In 2016, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) undertook a closer examination of the wrecks of the German U-boat U-576 and the Nicaraguan freighter SS Bluefields, using glass-domed submersibles. The two historically significant and deep (200m) shipwrecks sank near one another on the continental shelf of North Carolina, USA, during World War II.