Jupiter, FL (November 18, 2009) – Dr. Jon Moore, Associate Professor of Biology at Florida Atlantic University’s Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College, was very busy while on sabbatical during the 2008-2009 school year. Dr. Moore began his year away from FAU by teaching two ichthyology classes and conducting research on fish molecular evolution at Yale University in the fall of 2008.  His fish molecular evolution research is an attempt to work out the evolutionary development of bony fishes and the relations of different groups on the same family “tree.”

“There are over 27,000 species of bony fishes, so ways of organizing that diversity are helpful. That tree can also then be used to examine how aspects of body form and ecology have changed as fishes evolved into the many different subgroups,” according to Dr. Moore.

In the spring of 2009, Dr. Moore spent five weeks on a research cruise to Antarctica aboard a Russian ship. The primary goal of the cruise was to investigate the fishes and invertebrates around the South Orkney Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula.  The South Orkney Islands were the site of intensive overfishing in the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in greatly reduced numbers of fish and invertebrates.  In 1990, the area was closed to all commercial fishing. 

“In 1999, a research vessel went back to that area to determine whether stopping the fishing had improved the populations of fishes and invertebrates. They actually found little improvement. So, our trip was to investigate whether nearly twenty years of no fishing had helped the populations. It turns out that the populations were finally improving. This says a lot about how long it takes for fish and invertebrate populations to rebound from overfishing,” said Dr. Moore.

The cruise also examined fishes from the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, collected oceanographic data, studied penguin and fur seal colonies on some of the Antarctic Islands, and picked up scientists who were returning from work at two field stations.  Dr. Moore said, “Not only did we get a lot of information on the fish and invertebrate populations and how they recovered from fishing, but we also found several species unknown to science (including quite a few invertebrate species and possibly two new fish species). In addition, we discovered invertebrate reefs made of sponges and bryozoans. We wrote a preliminary report on the results of the cruise, but I am working on a formal paper listing all the fish species we caught and what we discovered about their biology.” 

That type of first-hand research is just one of the ways in which Wilkes Honors College professors help introduce their students both to current developments in their fields and to the techniques by which new insights are acquired.

byline: Tamara Howard