Bowling Green, Ky. - A Western Kentucky University biologist has received a grant from the National Geographic Society for his research of the goliath grouper, the largest species of bony fish on North American reefs.

Assistant professor Steve Huskey and two colleagues will spend the month of July off the southeast coast of Florida studying the feeding behavior of the goliath grouper.

The National Geographic Society’s Committee for Research and Exploration is providing $15,000 for the project while WKU’s Office of Sponsored Programs is providing $6,000.

While $21,000 isn’t as large as some other funded research under way at WKU, Dr. Huskey notes “there’s a certain prestige associated with the National Geographic Society. It means a lot to have the Society, devoted to worldwide research and exploration, willing to support a project like this.”

Dr. Huskey, a functional morphologist, studies an animal’s morphological characteristics – its overall body shape and feeding mechanism, its wings or limbs, its physiology and muscle structure, its behavior – and how it uses those characteristics for survival or success in the wild.

The goliath grouper, which looks like an enormous largemouth bass, can grow to 700 pounds and 8 feet long but it takes the leviathon four to seven years to reach reproductive maturity. This reproductive strategy, plus years of recreational and commercial fishing, has taken a toll on the species and it was placed on the threatened list in 1991. Its population has recently recovered thanks to its protected status and the addition of artificial reefs off the Florida coast.

“They’ve rebounded quite well,” Dr. Huskey said. “If they can be managed correctly and harvested only in sustainable numbers, it shouldn’t be a problem to maintain the species. They represent one of our few success stories.”

Dr. Huskey will work with Andrew Rhyne of Florida Tech and Grant Stoeklin of the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission on the project.

Dr. Huskey will use high-speed video analysis to study the goliath grouper’s feeding habits and territorial interactions. He plans to capture several small goliath groupers for further study in his WKU lab.

Dr. Huskey wants to study the goliath grouper’s feeding habits because as the largest predator on the reef the grouper shapes the entire reef community. The goliath grouper is a predator of the Florida spiny lobster and other commercially collected species of fish, shrimp and crab.

“The goliath grouper also eats juvenile sea turtles, which also are an endangered species,” Dr. Huskey said. “That means the populations of the goliath grouper and the sea turtle need to be managed correctly to maintain a sustainable resource.

“It comes down to trying to replenish natural populations after being depleted by human activity. By studying the species and learning as much as we can, we can shed light on their evolution, significance to the reef community and the best ways to fix our mistakes,” he said.

(Additional information on Dr. Huskey’s research can be found in the Fall 2006 issue of The Western Scholar magazine, which is online at http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Support/AcadAffairs/Magazine/)

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact Steve Huskey at (270) 745-2062.

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