| dc.description | This is a review on some biological and ecological characteristics of the early life stages of myctophids that exemplify their adaptations to coastal upwelling zones and oceanic nearby areas. The approach has been, however, not to make an exhaustive list of all possible research subjects but, in a more pragmatic way, a) to identify relevant aspects that can be approached with currently available methods in the region and, b) through examples of studies published nationally and regionally, to stimulate future research in larval ecology in the Humboldt Current. Three major themes were assessed: taxonomy and systematics, population ecology and reproductive strategies and, ecophysiology of the early life stages. Among the former, we detected a lack of information and descriptions, especially on the egg stage. We also document how differences occur in widely distributed species at the inter-population level. The development of new molecular techniques are expected to produce an increase in studies about inter- and intraspecific relationships at a regional level. On population biology studies, the relatively scarce information available from upwelling areas suggests that some species have the capacity to modify their reproductive strategies according to the oceanographic conditions, as it has also being documented for invertebrates. However, there is a shortage of information as a result of the lack of adequate sampling techniques to determine efficiently the changes in distribution, in particular in the vertical domain. The purchasing of equipment in several research centers of the region is expected to solve these limitations and to incentive the studies in this research line. Finally, in relation with studies on ecophysiology, we also detected a shortage of information even in very traditional topics such as on feeding and vertical migrations. Interestingly, however, we noticed that some research lines and methods currently very popular in the international literature (age and growth of larval fish utilizing otoliths), are also being utilized for larval fish studies of the Humboldt Current. Even more interesting, some research lines such as metabolisms under hypoxic conditions are being developed primarily in this zone | |
