Every well informed freshwater ichthyologist is familiar with petfrd.com forum. Petfrd does not easily translate to Singapore Cichlid Community, which seems to be the patron of the site, but I have no clue to what petfrd could mean. The forum has several sections, and postings are enthusiastic and often with beautiful images of habitats or [...]
Jul 062010
In Memoriam: Alf Johnels
Biographies
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Jun 232010
My former superviser, Alf G. Johnels, passed away on 24 May, 2010, at age 93. Alf has a long and interesting professional record, crowned by his professorship at the Department of Vertebrate Zoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History (1958-1982), and his presidency of the Royal Swedish Academy 1981-1983. He was also a key [...]
Jun 212010
Little has appeared in this blog lately, although its author is never far from the keyboard. The main reason has been the year-long, now ended suffering of my wife and research team member, Fang Fang. The last paper that she actively authored will appear the coming week, and it seems timely to write something about [...]
Cleaning out the bugs: fruitfly name to be based on science not convention
taxonomy, zoological nomenclature
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Apr 092010
The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature just published an opinion on the name of a laboratory animal known as fruit fly, and identified as Drosophila melanogaster. Yes, that standard lab creature to sort into phenotypes during genetics classes. An application was made in 2007 requesting that if phylogenetic research would show that the fruit fly [...]
Jan 012010
In the last few hours of the first decade of the 2000s, realising that my friends in the western Pacific time zones are already into the new decade, and writing this is not likely to come to an end this year. Snow and cold (-10 to -15C) outside demonstrate why tropical fish won’t do in [...]
At last: calendar boy
Cichlids
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Dec 052009
Being a well-known figure in fish circles can lead to occasional highlights. Last year I delivered my first fan autograph, quite unexpectedly, and I know I didn’t manage it with the speed of a movie celebrity. And now, the next step in an ichthyological career: calendar boy. Chatting with Christer Fredriksson in his shop Akvarielagret, [...]
Dec 022009
In March last year, our PhD student Te Yu Liao and I were able to collect along the Myanmar border with India, in tributaries to the Chindwin River. Our intended stops were Kalaymyo and Tamu, but we also tried stopping at streams along the road. It was very dry at the time, and even large [...]
Dec 012009
The year is isn’t over, and the snow did not fall over Stockholm yet, so it may be a bit early to summarise the year. But it might be better to start early, not to end up in december 2010 summarizing 2009, and then it has to be piece by piece. Writing this, I am [...]
Nov 092009
My friend Ralf Britz (Dracula fish), just released the description of a species related to the Dracula fish (Danionella dracula), viz., the Penis fish (Danionella priapus), which is number four in the genus (D. mirifica, and D. translucida were described earlier). This was a bit of of concern to me. Is the evolution of Danionella [...]
Aug 082009
Roger Hyam’s blog post Calling time on biological nomenclature and the comments it received, also on Taxacom, makes me wonder if not biodiversity informatics is the enemy rather than the servant of science. What some of my colleagues argue for are empty name lists, including also artificial constructs like barcode species. Then erecting the haplotype [...]
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