In our ‘Species within the Highlight’ collection, 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 numerous and zoologically fascinating 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 lined 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), significantly referring to feeding which has developed from anatomical research (Moss 1972) to 3-D laptop evaluation of jaw mechanics (Wroe et al. 2008). The reproductive biology of sharks is diverse, and consequently a topic of a lot analysis, together with embryonic growth (Shann 1923), sperm storage (Moura et al. 2011), and particular person variation in vaginal form and asymmetry utilizing progressive geometric morphometrics (Hedrick et al. 2019). The fascinating 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, reminiscent of dolphins (Heithaus 2001), are fascinating.
The small number of papers listed below 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 necessary position of technological advances in enabling research of species that spend most of their life hidden from people. The range of analysis on sharks through the years is hanging – we hope you get pleasure from re-discovering the intriguing world of sharks from a Journal of Zoology perspective.
Prof. Elissa Cameron
Editor-in-Chief, Journal of Zoology
