Environmental Biology of Fishes 48:13 – 14, 1997.
© 1997KIuwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.
Sturgeonbiodiversity and conservation: an introduction
WilliamE. Bemis¹,VadimJ.Birstein^2 &JohnR.Waldman^3
IDepartmentofBiology andGraduateProgram inOrganismic andEvolutionary Biology,Universityof
Massachusetts,Amherst, MA01003, U.S.A.
(^2) The Sturgeon Society, 331 West 57th Street, Suite 159,New York, NY 10019,U.S.A.
(^3) HudsonRiverFoundation, 40 West 20thStreet,NinthFloor,New York,NY10011,U.S.A.
Key words:Acipenseriformes, Acipenseridae, Polyodontidae, status
Thisvolume includes many of thepapers presented
at the International Conference onSturgeon Biodi-
versity andConservationwhichtookplace at The
AmericanMuseum ofNatural History(AMNH),
New York, on 28-30 July 1994. The main goal of the
Conference wastoattract attention tosturgeons
andpaddlefishes,still themost speciosegroup of
‘living fossil’fishes, but nowfast disappearingfrom
our planet (Birstein1993,Bemis &Findeis1994,
Waldman1995).
Somepresentationsat the conference described
basicaspects of acipenseriformbiology,including
evolution, genetics, andlife cycles.Othersfocused
on the contemporary status of aparticularspecies
or a few speciesinhabiting thesamebasin orregion:
most of thesecontributionsalsoaddressedongoing
conservationefforts.Stillotherspeakersexamined
currentcontroversies at the interfacebetween sci-
ence andsociety,bringinginformationfrom avarie-
ty of sources to enrich our meeting.Thesethree ap-
proaches arereflected bythe three partorganiza-
tion ofthisvolume:Part 1,Diversity andevolution:
Part 2,Biologyand status reports: and Part 3, Con-
troversies, conservation and summary. Wehope
that the includedpapersoffer a broadperspective
aboutcontemporarywork on the phylogeny of Aci-
penseriformes, aswell as areview of theworldwide
status ofalmost all of thespeciesconstitutingthis
order.
In preparing thematerials for publication, we dis-
covered several revisions in the scientificnames of
somespecies. Smith & Clugston(1997this volume)
followGilbert(1992),whoshowedthat the name of
the American Atlantic sturgeon has been frequent-
ly misspelled intheliterature andthat theoriginal
correct spelling is Acipenser oxyrinchus(instead of
the commonly usedA.oxyrhynchus).Ruban(
thisvolume)returns to theoriginal spelling of the
scientific name of the Siberian sturgeon,A.baerii
(instead ofA.baeri).We standardized thespelling
ofthesespeciesthroughout thevolume.Also, Bir-
stein et al.(1997thisvolume)presentedgenetic da-
ta showingthat the Sakhalinsturgeon,usually con-
sidered as thesamespecies as theAmerican green
sturgeonA.medirostrisor as its Asian subspecies A.
medirostris mikadoi,isin fact a distinct species, A.
mikadoi,as it was described originally (Hilgendorf
1892).Additional treatment of these andother
questions istaken up byBirstein & Bemis(1997this
volume).
Because the materialspresented indifferent pa-
perscover a widegeographicalrange,literally the
wholenorthernhemisphere, we tried to beconsis-
tentaboutgeographicnames and tofollow(insofar
as possible) oneresource for names. Weused the
New York Times Atlas(1992) as ourguide for uni-
fyinggeographicalnames throughout thevolume.
The biogeography of sturgeons has intriguedzool-
ogists formore than twohundredyears, and tounify
comments and analyses presented by the authorsof
the status papers on separate species of Acipenseri-
formes, we wrote a new contributionoverviewing
the biogeography ofthe entire group (Bemis & Ky-
nard1997).