Dear All Internal fertilisation in an egg-laying fish Some months ago I asked whether anyone was aware of any records of internal fertilisation of eggs in normally egg laying fish species. What I meant by that was records of embryos inside the ovaries of normally oviparous females. Thank you to those who responded. Although there are quite a number of fish species with internal fertilisation (viviparous), it appears that records of this occurring in species that normally lay eggs are extremely rare. The only well documented one that I have found is in the Japanese cottid fish Hemilepidotus gilberti, in which the embryos fail to develop properly, see: Hayakawa, Y., Munehara, H., 2001. Facultatively internal fertilization and anomalous embryonic development of a non-copulatory sculpin Hemilepidotus gilberti Jordan and Starks (Scorpaeniformes: Cottidae). J. Exp. Mar. Biol. Ecol. 256, 51- 58. and Hayakawa, Y., Munehara, H., 2003. Comparison of ovarian functions for keeping embryos by measurement of dissolved oxygen concentrations in ovaries of copulatory and non-copulatory oviparous fishes and viviparous fishes. 295, 245- 255. Best wishes Andrew MacColl Associate Professor of Evolutionary Ecology School of Life Sciences University of Nottingham University Park Nottingham NG7 2RD, U.K. Tel: +44 115 951 3410 http://ecology.nottingham.ac.uk/AndrewMacColl/index.php Andrew.Maccoll@nottingham.ac.uk