UW Labs Tide Bites

Big fish, small pond: An atypical development strategy in a local fish species — no bones, all bulk!

by Daniel Geldof

The Soft Sculpin – UW Labs photo

Daniel recently finished his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington’s School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences. He attended Autumn quarter 2014 at FHL, and continued his research there through 2015. He visits the Labs regularly, most recently this August for the scientific diver training program. Though engrossed by all marine life, he is most commonly found in Lab 8, pursuing knowledge of all things fishy.

Marine fishes usually start life with a larval phase, during which they are known as ichthyoplankton. Tiny and typically transparent, these animals experience an alien world and often bear little resemblance to their parents (Figure 1). With survival rates around 1%, being a larval fish is anything but easy. Born without skeletons, they are poor swimmers and worse hunters. Drifting in open water, unable to swim against tides and currents, their fates are often dictated by luck. The standard fishy solution to the survival problem is to lay huge numbers of eggs (tens of thousands to tens of millions), increasing the odds that a handful of offspring will pass through the larval phase.

Those that survive become juvenile fishes, capable of powerful swimming and effective feeding. They exit open water, moving to their adult habitat. For most fishes this transition is rapid, the larval stage lasting only a few weeks. Our study focused on development in two species of sculpin, linking morphological changes with behavioral shifts. Continue reading

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