MS528. Marine Fisheries Science. Fall, even years (3) Dr. Olney, Dr. Latour.

Principles and techniques, including the theory of fishing, age and growth, definition of stocks, catch statistics, description of world fisheries, goals and problems in managing a common property resource. Six lecture, laboratory and field hours.

MS571. Culture and Physiology of Aquatic Organisms. Spring 1997 (3) Dr. Mann.

History and principles of culture of aquatic organisms. Physical and biological system requirements, water quality, feeding and nutrition, manipulation of reproductive biology, selection of cultured species, quarantine and disease control, current practices in finfish and shellfish culture, physiological and biochemical methods to assess condition of cultured organisms.

MS657. The Early Life History of Marine Fishes. Fall, odd years (3) Dr. Olney.

(Prerequisite: MS 666 or consent of instructor)
Ontogeny, systematics, physiology, behavior and ecology of egg, larval and juvenile stages of fishes with special reference to adaptations for survival. Population dynamics and the importance of early life history in the recruitment process are emphasized. Ichthyoplankton sampling methods are outlined. In the laboratory, eggs and/or larvae of 100+ families of teleostean fishes are examined, and characters useful in identification are presented. Two lecture and two laboratory hours.

MS665. Fisheries Climatology. Fall, odd years (3) Dr. Austin.

(Prerequisite: MS 528)
Effects of natural environmental variability on the recruitment, availability (yield), abundance and behavior of living marine resources. Application to real-time fishing operations and climate scale analysis of fishery fluctuations. Instruction in basic meteorology and climatology with application to the ocean. Two lecture hours and one laboratory hour.

MS666. Ichthyology. Spring (3 or 5) Dr. Musick.

Functional morphology, behavior, ecology, zoogeography and evolution of fishes. Seven lecture, laboratory and field hours. Three credits without laboratory; five credits with laboratory.

MS667. Experimental and Quantitative Ecology. Spring (4) Dr. Lipcius.

The design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of field and laboratory experiments in ecology. Includes lectures, discussion and supervised field and laboratory projects designed to illustrate the diversity of experimental and quantitative approaches in use by ecologists. Topics include the scientific method, experimental design, the use and abuse of statistical techniques, modeling and manuscript preparation, with emphasis on topical ecological issues such as those dealing with predator-prey interactions, recruitment phenomena, environmental science (e.g., dose-response assays) and metapopulation dynamics. Lecture and laboratory.

MS668. Malacology. Spring, even years (3) Dr. Mann.

The fossil record and the ancestral mollusc. Structure and function of the molluscan shell. Review of molluscan taxonomy. Reproductive biology, physiology, ecology, and feeding mechanisms of the molluscs.

MS670. Stock Assessment Methods. Spring (3) Dr. Hoenig.

(Prerequisites: 528, 582 and 671 or equivalent; one year of calculus; one year of statistics; familiarity with a computer language/package for numerical computation.)
Survey of methods for assessing the status of exploited populations given various combinations of data types. Emphasis is on deriving statistical methods using maximum likelihood and other analytical techniques, and on computing estimates for a variety of datasets. Use of population models to integrate information on stock status in order to determine appropriate management measures. Analysis of uncertainty in assessment results and implications of uncertainty for management. Analysis of research survey, commercial catch, fishing effort, and tagging data will be considered.

MS671. Fisheries Population Dynamics. Spring (3-4) Staff.

Theory and practice of stock identification, growth, abundance, mortality, recruitment, and biomass production in fisheries stocks. Objectives of fishery management. Responses of stocks and fisheries to exploitation. Fluctuations in abundance, population growth forms, and population regulation. Theory, interpretation, and application of fisheries yield models including yield and eggs-per-recruit, production, and spawner-recruit models. Examples drawn from finfish and shellfish stocks.

MS673. Marine Population Genetics. Spring, odd years (3) Dr. Graves.

(Prerequisite: Undergraduate Genetics or permission of instructor)
A study of the evolutionary processes responsible for the intra- and interspecific genetic relationships of marine organisms with an emphasis on the application of current molecular methodologies. 3 hrs. lecture.

MS674. Marine Population Genetics Laboratory. Spring (2) Dr. Graves.

(Prerequisite: Undergraduate Genetics or permission of instructor)
Students will elucidate intra- and interspecific genetic relationships by employing a variety of molecular techniques for the analysis of proteins and nucleic acids. 5 hrs. laboratory.

MS698. Larval Ecology. Spring (3) Dr. Mann.

Ecology of marine larval forms: spawning and development patterns; physical limitations on the fertilization process, feeding, nutrition and mobility; size and parental investment, dispersal and metamorphosis, post metamorphic survival.

A listing of all VIMS Graduate Courses.

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