Sharks – Journal of Zoology Weblog
In our ‘Species within the Highlight’ sequence, we transfer from an iconic predator to a bunch of iconic predators, however a bunch extra misunderstood and maligned – The Lion King vs Jaws. Sharks are an extremely various and zoologically attention-grabbing group of species which have lengthy been of curiosity to the readers of the Journal of Zoology. There was a big variety of analysis printed on sharks from the very earliest days in each Transactions of the Zoological Society of London and Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London. The analysis spans the vary of disciplines coated by the journal, making for a various assortment of papers. Welcome to the Journal of Zoology’s very personal shark week!
Sharks have lengthy fascinated researchers with some recurring themes on their structural biology (Parker 1878, Matthews & Parker 1950, Alexander 1998), notably regarding feeding which has advanced from anatomical research (Moss 1972) to 3-D pc evaluation of jaw mechanics (Wroe et al. 2008). The reproductive biology of sharks is assorted, and consequently a topic of a lot analysis, together with embryonic improvement (Shann 1923), sperm storage (Moura et al. 2011), and particular person variation in vaginal form and asymmetry utilizing modern geometric morphometrics (Hedrick et al. 2019). The attention-grabbing number of shark species has been the topic of papers describing entire teams (Tate Regan 1908), in addition to newly described species (Chan 1966), together with fossil sharks (Harris 1951). Given the worldwide distribution of sharks, it’s no shock that analysis has focussed on geographic distributions (Gudger 1934), revolutionized by satellite tv for pc telemetry permitting the monitoring of smaller scale motion patterns (Eckert et al. 2002). Lastly, the predator-prey relationships of sharks are legendary, just like the looking patterns of the well-known white sharks (Martin et al. 2009), and their interactions with different species, comparable to dolphins (Heithaus 2001), are charming.
The small collection of papers listed here are a subset of the analysis on sharks in Journal of Zoology. They present how a lot our data of sharks has grown, and the vital function of technological advances in enabling research of species that spend most of their life hidden from people. The range of analysis on sharks over time is hanging – we hope you take pleasure in re-discovering the intriguing world of sharks from a Journal of Zoology perspective.
Prof. Elissa Cameron
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Zoology
