Fish life in special environments

Living organisms are endowed with ingenious adaptive mechanisms to cope with the adversities of special environments. Due to the vast diversity of their habitats, fish make an excellent model to depict the interplay of morphological, physiological and biochemical aspects, and are often used to study adaptive processes to a new environment. The book covers fish in diverse environmental conditions such as alkaline environments, caves, Antarctic, ice cold lakes, tropical coral reefs, and deep waters. The chapters also discuss mitochondrial functions in the cold, circadian rhythms, endocrinology of migratory fish life cycle and fish muscle function. The topics have been selected in order to present a window to an array of adaptations of aquatic inhabitants which enable them to subsist and survive in the uncommon, and often hostile, external environment.

Fish osmoregulation in special environments / A.J.R. Péqueux -- Alcolapia grahami : a fish inhabiting a highly alkaline environment of Lake Magadi, Kenya / Daniel W. Onyango and Seth M. Kisia -- Cave fishes : the consequences of the life in darkness / Jakob Parzefall -- Circadian rhythms in hypogean fish : with special reference to the cave loach, Nemacheilus evezardi / Atanu Kumar Pati -- Hemoglobinless Antarctic icefish : adaptations to living at sub-zero temperatures / Seth M. Kisia and Daniel W. Onyango -- Fish life in special environments : mitochondrial function in the cold / Helfa Guderly and Edouard Kraffe -- Hypoxic survival in two extremes : under the ice and on coral reefs / Göran E. Nilsson and Sara Östlund-Nilsson -- Endocrinology of migratory fish life cycle in special environments : the role of metamorphoses / Karine Rousseau and Sylvie Dufour -- Fish muscle function and pressure / Philippe Sébert -- Alepocephaloids, a key teleostean group : their myology, functional anatomy, phylogeny and specializations to deep-water environments / Rui Diogo -- Diversity and adaptation in deep-channel neotropical electric fishes / William G.R. Crampton.