Ravings on Fish Evolution
I recently uploaded a few videos which go into some detail of fish evolution. It’s a fascinating topic, since fishes have adapted to a large variety of ecological niches, and pulled a great variety of evolutionary tricks out of the “blind watchmaker’s” bag. Evolution has modified the bodies, swimming styles & hydrodynamic features, as well as the reproductive systems and the social systems of fish species, to allow them to thrive in their habitats and niches.
I combined the footage I shot underwater in the Philippines, and my regular readings of the scientific literature to put together a few videos and blog posts. I hope they are fun to read and educational:
Ambon Scorpionfish & Jacks
The Ambon scorpionfish is highly camouflaged, to resemble a ball of algae. On a gradient of camouflage to swimming optimization, it is on the other end of the very fast and agile jackfish:
Convict Fish
The convict fish is probably the most unusual fish on tropical coral reefs. It’s sometimes called a convict blenny, or convict goby, but it’s neither. And, it shows a social behavior which seems somewhat like eusociality.
Find out more in this detailed blog post, and video:
Anglerfish Evolution Paper
I also started to run a YouTube journal club lately – I am walking the interested viewer through the recent scientific literature in marine biology and fish biology. The latest instance of these videos is this one about a very cool new paper about anglerfish evolution. Molecular methods, looking at the DNA of animals, has allowed scientists to find out so many curious connections between ecology, behavior and evolution.
Sometimes the scientific literature is hard to decipher, even for the educated non-specialist, so I am rolling out these new scientific insights in a way which is not the least dumbed down, but understandable for the interested layperson:
Best Fishes,
Klaus
