Tyson R. Roberts

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Tyson Royal Roberts [1] is an American ichthyologist. He has been described as "the world's foremost authority on Regalecus ". [2]

Contents

Roberts attended Stanford University, where he earned his B.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in 1968. [1] His doctoral thesis was titled "Studies on the osteology and phylogeny of characoid fishes." [3] He won a 1999 Guggenheim Fellowship in the field of "Organismic Biology & Ecology", [4] and is a research associate at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama [5] and is also affiliated to the Institute of Molecular Biosciences of Mahidol University, Thailand.

Career

Roberts has done extensive fieldwork on tropical freshwater fishes in South America, Africa, Asia, and New Guinea, and has worked in most fish collections in museums and other institutions throughout the world. Fish specimens resulting from this fieldwork are deposited in the California Academy of Sciences, Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, Swedish Museum of Natural History, and many other institutions.

He has published several major works on fish faunas, including the Kapuas River of Borneo, Fly River of New Guinea, and rapids of the lower Congo River, and has described numerous new taxa of freshwater fishes from these and other places. His research also has focused on the major adaptive features of Ostariophysan fish groups that have facilitated their adaptations and evolutionary radiations. These include the multicuspid teeth of characoids, unicellular epidermal horny projections (named “unculi” by him) in most groups of ostariophysans, and recurrent trophic polymorphism of the lips, horny jaw sheaths, and other soft mouth structures of the Cyprinidae.

His Systematics, Biology, and Distribution of the Species of the Oceanic Oarfish Genus Regalecus (Teleostei, Lampridiformes, Regalecidae), 2012, is the authoritative publication on the subject. It is unparallelled in its scope, detail, documentation and shrewd scientific reasoning, as well as providing some challenging hypotheses, also in connection with climate change and the Gulf Stream, while at the same time very accessible for the interested reader. In this major study of the fascinating longest bony fish ever (Guinness Book of Records), Dr Roberts has scrutinized all the material available worldwide and throughout history, even taking into account geological evolution over millions of years, a colossal undertaking. Occasional suggestions for further study by scientists. There are many instructive and beautiful illustrations, graphs and tables. (Still available.)

Roberts's other scholarly interests include Charles Darwin and his concept of natural selection as products of the Scottish Enlightenment, and identification of royal portrait statues of ancient Khmer devaraja or divine kings with the reigning monarchs they portray including Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII.

Selected publications

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Characidae</span> Family of fishes

Characidae, the characids or characins, is a family of freshwater subtropical and tropical fish belonging to the order Characiformes. The name "characins" is a historical one, but scientists today tend to prefer "characids" to reflect their status as a, by and large, monophyletic group. To arrive there, this family has undergone much systematic and taxonomic change. Among those fishes remaining in the Characidae currently are the tetras, comprising the very similar genera Hemigrammus and Hyphessobrycon, as well as a few related forms, such as the cave and neon tetras. Fish of this family are important as food in several regions, and also constitute a large percentage of captive freshwater aquarium fish species.

Lampriformes is an order of ray-finned fish. Members are collectively called lamprids or lampriforms, and unite such open-ocean and partially deep-sea Teleostei as the crestfishes, oarfish, opahs, and ribbonfishes. A synonym for this order is Allotriognathi, while an often-seen, but apparently incorrect, spelling variant is Lampridiformes. They contain seven extant families which are generally small but highly distinct, and a mere 12 lampriform genera with some 20 species altogether are recognized. They are the only extant members of the superorder Lamprimorpha, which was formerly diverse throughout much of the Late Cretaceous.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oarfish</span> Pelagic lampriform fish belonging to Regalecidae

Oarfish are large, greatly elongated, pelagic lampriform fish belonging to the small family Regalecidae. Found in areas spanning from temperate ocean zones to tropical ones, yet rarely seen, the oarfish family contains three species in two genera. One of these, the giant oarfish, is the longest bony fish alive, growing up to about 8 m (26 ft) in length.

<i>Rasbora</i> Genus of fishes

Rasbora is a genus of fish in the family Cyprinidae. They are native to freshwater habitats in South and Southeast Asia, as well as southeast China. A single species, R. gerlachi, is only known from an old specimen that reputedly originated from Africa (Cameroon), but this locality is considered doubtful. They are small, up to 17 cm (6.7 in) long, although most species do not surpass 10 cm (4 in) and many have a dark horizontal stripe.

<i>Clarias</i> Genus of fishes

Clarias is a genus of catfishes of the family Clariidae, the airbreathing catfishes. The name is derived from the Greek chlaros, which means lively, in reference to the ability of the fish to live for a long time out of water.

<i>Danionella</i> Genus of fishes

Danionella is a genus of danionin fish found in freshwater habitats in Myanmar and West Bengal, India. It includes some of the smallest fishes.

<i>Paedocypris</i> Genus of fishes

Paedocypris is a genus of tiny cyprinid fish found in swamps and streams on the Southeast Asian islands of Borneo, Sumatra and Bintan.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Giant oarfish</span> Species of fish

The giant oarfish is a species of oarfish of the family Regalecidae. It is an oceanodromous species with a worldwide distribution, excluding polar regions. Other common names include Pacific oarfish, king of herrings, ribbonfish, and streamer fish.

<i>Schistura</i> Genus of fishes

Schistura is a genus of fish in the stone loach family Nemacheilidae native to the streams and rivers of the southern and eastern Asia. Some of these species are troglobitic.

Maurice Kottelat is a Swiss ichthyologist specializing in Eurasian freshwater fishes.

<i>Agrostichthys</i> Species of fish

Agrostichthys parkeri, also called the streamer fish, is a species of oarfish. Only seven identified specimens have been examined, with few found fully intact, and have mainly been found in the Southern Ocean. Agrostichthys parkeri belongs to the Regalecidae (oarfish) family in the Lampriformes order and is the only known member of its genus. This species has been known to grow up to 3 metres (9.8 ft) long and has a ribbon-like body, two large eyes, a protruding mouth and long filamentous rays originating at the head. Due to only seven specimens being found, only the distribution and anatomy of Agrostichthys parkeri can be documented.

Gerald Robert "Gerry" Allen is an American-born Australian ichthyologist. His career began in 1963, when he spent a semester at the University of Hawaii, where he also received a PhD in marine zoology in 1971. In 1972, Allen wrote his doctoral thesis on the systematics and biology of the anemone fish.

Labiobarbus siamensis is a freshwater fish of the family Cyprinidae native to the rivers of Thailand.

Lynne R. Parenti is an American ichthyologist. She serves as a Research Scientist and Curator of Fishes at the National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution. Her specialty is the systematics and historical biogeography of freshwater and coastal fishes, and she has conducted research in this area for about thirty years.

Heok Hui Tan is a Singaporean ichthyologist at the Lee Kong Chian Natural History Museum of the National University of Singapore. Dr. Tan's main interest lies in the systematics of Southeast Asian freshwater fishes, encompassing taxonomy, ecology and biogeography. His primary areas of research focus on neglected and de novo habitats such as peat swamp forests, swamp forests, and rapids.

<i>Regalecus russelii</i> Species of oarfish

Regalecus russelii, or Russell's oarfish, is a species of oarfish in the family Regalecidae. It is a broadly-distributed marine fish, found in waters in the bathypelagic zone. R. russelii is a scaleless, elongate and ribbonlike fish, growing up to 8 meters in length.

Ernest Albert Lachner was an American ichthyologist with an international reputation for his research on Indo-Pacific gobies and cardinalfishes.

Scott Allen Schaefer is an American ichthyologist working at the American Museum of Natural History as the dean of science for collections, exhibitions, and the public understanding of science; he serves as the curator-in-charge, in the department of ichthyology, within the division of vertebrate zoology.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lamprimorpha</span> Superorder of marine ray-finned fishes

Lamprimorpha is a superorder of marine ray-finned fishes, representing a basal group of the highly diverse clade Acanthomorpha. Represented today only by the order Lampriformes, recent studies have recovered other basal fossil species of the group dating as far back as the Cenomanian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Some of these fossil taxa, such as the paraphyletic genus Aipichthys, are among the oldest known fossil acanthomorphs, and overall they appear to have been a major component of the marine fish fauna at that time. Lamprimorpha is thought to be the sister group to the superorder Paracanthopterygii, which contains cod, dories, and trout-perches; however, Lamprimorpha may instead be sister to Acanthopterygii.

References

  1. 1 2 "Tyson Royal Roberts". Affiliated Research Staff Listing. Smithsonian. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  2. ↑ "About the author: Tyson R. Roberts". Chicago University Press. Retrieved July 25, 2013.
  3. ↑ Worldcat record for Roberts' thesis. OCLC   25759726.
  4. ↑ "Fellows (search result)". John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Archived from the original on July 25, 2013. Retrieved July 25, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Research Associates and Associates in Communication". Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Archived from the original on November 7, 2010. Retrieved June 25, 2017.


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