Symposium 2004: Comparative Biology and Interactions of Wild and Farmed Fish Imperial College, 19th to 23th July

Aquaculture is expanding rapidly throughout the world and is likely to become the dominant source of aquatic food within one or two decades. Many new species are being brought into culture, with consequences for their morphology, physiology, life histories and ultimately their evolution. In many established culture species, the abundance of farmed populations greatly exceeds that of wild stocks, and interactions between the two sets of populations pose important problems for biological conservation. Understanding the comparative biology of wild and farmed fish is thus of fundamental interest to the development of new aquaculture species, as well as to the conservation of wild fish stocks. The Symposium will provide a timely forum to explore and synthesize this exciting area of fish biology.

Themes

The programme will be structured around seven themes. Each theme will be introduced by a keynote lecture, followed by contributed papers and a brief overview of relevant poster contributions.

1. Biology of fish domestication
2. Behavioural and physiological consequences of domestication
3. Life history responses to culture
4. Genetics and evolution in widely cultured species
5. Conservation aquaculture and fisheries enhancement
6. Conservation risks from cultured fish in the wild
7. Contributions to fundamental biology and synthesis

Keynote lectures
Jack Jones Memorial Lecture

Professor Eugene Balon
About the oldest domesticates among fishes and the epigenetic dichotomy of fish culture

Invited Speakers

Professor Felicity Hungerford
Implications of domestication and rearing conditions for the behaviour of cultured fish

Professor John Thorpe
Life history responses of fishes to culture

Professor Fred Utter
Population genetics, conservation and evolution in widely cultured fishes

Professor Ian Fleming
Reproductive ecology of cultured fish in the wild