عنوان

GCP/RER/010/ITA/MSM-18 (MedSudMed Technical Documents n°18)
Identification sheets of early life stages of bony fish

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This document describes the morphological and taxonomical characteristics of early life stages of bony fish collected during the MedSudMed ichtyoplankton survey which was carried out in Libyan waters on board the R/V Urania in August 2006. The survey and data processing were conducted in the framework of the MedSudMed Project and in cooperation between the Institute for Coastal Marine Environment of the National Council for the Research (Italy) and the Marine Biology Research Centre (Libya). The document is structured in order to provide the readers with the baseline knowledge for the identification of fish larvae found in the seas bordering the Libyan coasts. In particular, in Chapters 1 and 2 an introduction to the ecological relevance of ichtyoplankton and on the water mass circulation in Libyan waters are respectively reported, as well as a description of the materials and methods used to sample, store and identify fish larvae. Chapter 3 describes the criteria and technical background necessary for the species identification and the main morpho-biometric characteristics used to describe the fish larvae. In Chapter 4 a description of the larvae collected during the survey along the Libyan waters is provided according to a systematic classification. An overview of the references on this topic is also included in the document (Chapter 5).