A WORKING BIBLIOGRAPHY ON REARING LARVAL 

 MARINE FISHES IN THE LABORATORY 



By James W. Atz, Curator 



New York Aquarium, New York Zoolosical Society, Brooklyn, N.Y. 



Abstract. — The literature available on bibliographic resources on rearing lan-al marine 

 fishes in laboratory aquariums is reviewed critically : the list of references pai^ers of special 

 interest are designated. A list of marine teleost fishes reared in captivity is included. 



It has been said that God made an ani- 

 mal to solve every problem in physiology 

 and that the principal task of the experi- 

 menter is to find the species most suited to 

 his needs. Although this statement con- 

 tains a greater element of faith than even 

 those who would never use it impiously 

 might realize, the number of different lab- 

 oratory animals available to the experi- 

 mental biologist has continued to increase 

 over the years along with the increase in 

 number and variety of experiments. 



As experimental animals, however, 

 fishes have lagged behind the members of 

 the other vertebrate classes, and only a 

 minuscule fraction of the estimated 15 to 

 40 thousand species has found its way into 

 the laboratory. The relatively remote 

 phylogenetic position of the fishes and a 

 few of tlieir specific attributes, such as 

 smallness of cells, have made them un- 

 popular, but the principal obstacle to a 

 more widespread use of fishes as labora- 

 tory animals is their limited ability to 

 maintain homeostasis, which makes them 

 delicate experimental subjects and estab- 

 lishes quite rigid requirements for their 

 successful maintenance in captivity. This 

 has been particularly true of the marine 

 species, which are generally much more 



The author's present address is American 

 Museum of Natural History, New York, N.Y. 



stenokous than those inhabiting fresh or 

 brackish waters. Moreover, the limita- 

 tions imposed by the inherent stenoky of 

 marine fishes are aggravated by the diffi- 

 culty of establishing a stable environment 

 in salt-water aquariums. 



The same factors have impeded the do- 

 mestication of fishes; no marine species 

 has yet been domesticated, principally be- 

 cause no salt-water fish can be bred gen- 

 eration after generation in captivity (Atz 

 and Pickford, 1959). Domestication is 

 not necessarily a prerequisite for even ex- 

 tensive use in the laboratory — witness 

 those laboratory favorites, the true frogs 

 {Rana spp.) and the mummichog {Fund- 

 ulus heteroclitus) — but all domesticated 

 animals are, of course, available to the ex- 

 perimentalist as, for example, are rain- 

 bow trout {Salmo gairdnerll)^ carp 

 {Cyprinus carpio), guppy {Poecilia reti- 

 culata)^ and Siamese fighting fish {Betta 

 splendens). There would be an immedi- 

 ately realized monetary advantage in 

 spawning and rearing the milkfish 

 {Chaiios chanos) and mullet {Mugil ceph- 

 alus) for pondfish culture, but the poten- 

 tial value of being able to study under 

 controlled conditions all phases of the life 

 histories of the marine fishes that will soon 

 provide the bulk of man's animal protein 

 food is inestimable. 



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