The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Master's Theses Fall 2019 Distribution, Abundance, and Trophic Ecology of Anguilliform Leptocephali in the Northern Gulf of Mexico Lillian Collins University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses Part of the Marine Biology Commons Recommended Citation Collins, Lillian, "Distribution, Abundance, and Trophic Ecology of Anguilliform Leptocephali in the Northern Gulf of Mexico" (2019). Master's Theses. 687. https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/687 This Masters Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. DISTRIBUTION, ABUNDANCE, AND TROPHIC ECOLOGY OF ANGUILLIFORM LEPTOCEPHALI IN THE NORTHERN GULF OF MEXICO by Lillian Collins A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Ocean Science and Engineering at The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Approved by: Dr. Frank J. Hernandez, Committee Chair Dr. Kevin S. Dillon Dr. Jesse Filbrun ____________________ ____________________ ____________________ Dr. Frank J. Hernandez Dr. Leila J. Hamdan Dr. Karen S. Coats Committee Chair Associate Director of Dean of the Graduate School School December 2019 COPYRIGHT BY Lillian Collins 2019 Published by the Graduate School ABSTRACT All species of anguilliform eels have pelagic leptocephalus larval stages, which provides a means of monitoring the population dynamics of these otherwise cryptic and hard to study species.