Whale sharks increase swimming effort while filter feeding, but appear to maintain high foraging efficiencies.

Whale sharks (Rhincodon typus) - the largest extant fish species - reside in tropical environments, making them an exception to the general rule that animal size increases with latitude. How this largest fish thrives in tropical environments that promote high metabolism but support less robust zooplankton communities has not been sufficiently explained. We used open-source inertial measurement units (IMU) to log 397 h of whale shark behavior in Yucatán, Mexico, at a site of both active feeding and intense wildlife tourism. Here we show that the strategies employed by whale sharks to compensate for the increased drag of an open mouth are similar to ram feeders five orders of magnitude smaller and one order of magnitude larger. Presumed feeding constituted 20% of the total time budget of four sharks, with individual feeding bouts lasting up to 11 consecutive hours. Compared with normal, sub-surface swimming, three sharks increased their stroke rate and amplitude while surface feeding, while one shark that fed at depth did not demonstrate a greatly increased energetic cost. Additionally, based on time-depth budgets, we estimate that aerial surveys of shark populations should consider including a correction factor of 3 to account for the proportion of daylight hours that sharks are not visible at the surface. With foraging bouts generally lasting several hours, interruptions to foraging during critical feeding periods may represent substantial energetic costs to these endangered species, and this study presents baseline data from which management decisions affecting tourist interactions with whale sharks may be made.

Draft sequencing and assembly of the genome of the world's largest fish, the whale shark: Rhincodon typus Smith 1828.

BACKGROUND: The whale shark (Rhincodon typus) has by far the largest body size of any elasmobranch (shark or ray) species. Therefore, it is also the largest extant species of the paraphyletic assemblage commonly referred to as fishes. As both a phenotypic extreme and a member of the group Chondrichthyes - the sister group to the remaining gnathostomes, which includes all tetrapods and therefore also humans - its genome is of substantial comparative interest. Whale sharks are also listed as an endangered species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of threatened species and are of growing popularity as both a target of ecotourism and as a charismatic conservation ambassador for the pelagic ecosystem. A genome map for this species would aid in defining effective conservation units and understanding global population structure. RESULTS: We characterised the nuclear genome of the whale shark using next generation sequencing (454, Illumina) and de novo assembly and annotation methods, based on material collected from the Georgia Aquarium. The data set consisted of 878,654,233 reads, which yielded a draft assembly of 1,213,200 contigs and 997,976 scaffolds. The estimated genome size was 3.44Gb. As expected, the proteome of the whale shark was most closely related to the only other complete genome of a cartilaginous fish, the holocephalan elephant shark. The whale shark contained a novel Toll-like-receptor (TLR) protein with sequence similarity to both the TLR4 and TLR13 proteins of mammals and TLR21 of teleosts. The data are publicly available on GenBank, FigShare, and from the NCBI Short Read Archive under accession number SRP044374. CONCLUSIONS: This represents the first shotgun elasmobranch genome and will aid studies of molecular systematics, biogeography, genetic differentiation, and conservation genetics in this and other shark species, as well as providing comparative data for studies of evolutionary biology and immunology across the jawed vertebrate lineages.

A simple reagent-free spectrophotometric assay for monitoring metronidazole therapy in aquarium water.

A reagent-free spectrophotometric assay was developed to measure the concentration of metronidazole (a 5-nitroimidazole) in both freshwater and seawater matrices. This assay is simple, repeatable, sensitive, and precise and is ideal for use when a rapid, selective test to determine metronidazole concentration in aqueous matrices is necessary. The assay was practically tested on a South American fishes display during treatment with metronidazole for an outbreak of the flagellated parasite Spironucleus in a mixed cichlid (family Cichlidae) and tetra (family Characidae) community. The assay clearly illustrated the course of treatment for the system during a real clinical application. The assay is not without limitations, as interferences can occur from other drugs in the matrix with similar absorbance spectra. Nonetheless, this type of assay illustrates the potential for use of native absorbance assays in aqueous matrices for this and other therapeutic compounds.