JOHN R. GOLD

Regents and Cintron Professor
Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences

Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences
Texas A&M University
TAMU 2258
College Station, TX 77843-2258
Office: 324A, Old Heep (map)
Phone: 979.847.8778
E-mail: goldfish@tamu.edu
Department Web page

Keywords: Molecular ecology (population genetics and conservation genetics) and quantitative genetics of marine and freshwater fishes

Interests:
We study genetic variation and diversity and their spatial/temporal distributions in both marine and freshwater fishes. Selectively neutral genetic markers such as nuclear-encoded microsatellites and sequences of mitochondrial protein-coding genes are employed. Of primary interest is the spatial/temporal distribution of population assemblages along a geographic surface. Also of primary interest is the spatial/temporal distribution of effective population size as a means to both predict fluctuations in abundance and assess extinction potential. Other ongoing work in the laboratory involves the genetics of quantitative traits such as growth rate, thermal tolerance, and other performance characters in two species of interest to aquaculture in the southwest. The organismal focus of our work is fishes and includes both economically important marine species in the Gulf of Mexico (e.g., red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, and red snapper, Lutjanus campechanus) and endangered freshwater fishes (mostly cyprinids).

Disciplines: Conservation Biology, Evolutionary & Population Genetics

Selected publications:
Saillant, E., Patton, J.C., Ross, K.E., and Gold, J.R.(2004). Conservation genetics and demographic history of populations of critically endangered Cape Fear shiners, Notropis mekistocholas. Molecular Ecology 13: 2947-2958.

Saillant, E., Bradfield, S. C., and Gold, J. R. (2006). Genetic impacts of shrimp trawling on red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the northern Gulf of Mexico. ICES Journal of Marine Science 63: 705-713.

Gold, J. R. and Saillant, E. (2007) Population structure of red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) from the Northern Gulf of Mexico. In: "Red Snapper Ecology and Fisheries in the US Gulf of Mexico" (W. Patterson, J. Cowan, G. Fitzhugh, and D. Nieland, eds.). American Fisheries Society Symposium 60: 201-216.

Gold, J. R., Ma, L. Saillant, E., Silva, P. S., and Vega, R. R. (2008) Genetic effective size in populations of hatchery-raised red drum, Sciaenops ocellatus, released for stock enhancement. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 137: 1327-1334.

Gold, J. R., Saillant, E., Ebelt, N. D., and Lem, S. (2009). Conservation genetics of gray snapper (Lutjanus griseus) in U.S. waters of the northern Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic Ocean. Copeia 2009: 277-286.

Karlsson, S., Saillant, E., and Gold, J. R. (2009) Population structure and genetic variation of lane snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) in the northern Gulf of Mexico. Marine Biology. In press.