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coralreeffish.com presents
my research on coral reef fishes. Since my first introduction
to coral reefs, in the San Blas Islands of Panama (when
I started graduate school way back in 1980), I have
been particularly interested in the early stages of
reef fishes: the pelagic larvae that disperse offshore
into the open ocean and then return after weeks or months
to the reef. Little is known about the process and much
remains to be discovered about all aspects of their
lives. I have been working for several years now on
my big online guide to larval reef fishes of the Caribbean;
it is progressing, although with starts and stops as
other projects intercede...
More recently, I have been part
of the DNA barcoding program FISH-BOL,
the Fish Barcode of Life Project, which is trying to
obtain the sequence of a standardized segment of the
mitochondrial genome (652 base pairs of cytochrome oxidase-1)
for all fishes. Their comprehensive database is online
as BOLD, the Barcode
of Life Database, with wonderful tools and vast
numbers of public sequences to explore. At present I
have about 3,000 barcodes for several hundred species
and collaborate with two other groups that focus on
the Caribbean region as well. Combined, we have barcodes
for perhaps 2/3 of the (approximately) 1200 shorefish
species in the tropical western Atlantic. Initially
I mainly used barcodes to identify fish larvae, but
the results were often suprising and unexpected, and
it has opened a Pandora's box of amazing information
on the genetic structure of fish populations- which
led to my latest interest in fish taxonomy. Mostly as
a result of DNA sequencing, I have discovered several
new reef-fish species, with many more waiting out there
to be examined...
I hope to keep this site updated
on my latest research plans and progress and use it
as a vehicle to disseminate my published papers and
present my ever-changing opus on the larvae of coral
reef fishes. I will also make my collection data visible
and available to other scientists and hopefully stimulate
some networking among reef fish biologists who wish
to collaborate on interesting subjects.
Benjamin Victor
To contact me via e-mail: ben at-sign, then coralreeffish.com
from one of my last few expeditions:
My foray to Dominica, a volcanic
island in the Windward chain of the Lesser Antilles.
I am on the hunt for tiny fish with my trusty green
aquarium net! note the scarcity of live corals- that
is typical of many sites in the Lesser Antilles these
days.
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