Fishes are wonderfully diverse. This variety is a result of the ability of ray-finned fishes to adapt to a wide range of environments, and has made them more specious than the rest of vertebrates combined. With such diversity it is easy to dismiss comparisons between distantly related fishes in efforts to understand the biology of a particular fish species. However, shared ancestry and the conservation of developmental mechanisms, morphological features and physiology provide the ability to use comparative analyses between different organisms to understand mechanisms of development and physiology. The use of species that are amenable to experimental investigation provides tools to approach questions that would not be feasible in other 'non-model' organisms. For example, the use of small teleost fishes such as zebrafish and medaka has been powerful for analysis of gene function and mechanisms of disease in humans, including skeletal diseases. However, use of these fish to aid in understanding variation and disease in other fishes has been largely unexplored. This is especially evident in aquaculture research. Here we highlight the utility of these small laboratory fishes to study genetic and developmental factors that underlie skeletal malformations that occur under farming conditions. We highlight several areas in which model species can serve as a resource for identifying the causes of variation in economically important fish species as well as to assess strategies to alleviate the expression of the variant phenotypes in farmed fish. We focus on genetic causes of skeletal deformities in the zebrafish and medaka that closely resemble phenotypes observed both in farmed as well as natural populations of fishes.

中文翻译：

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Fish is Fish：使用实验模型物种揭示进化和疾病中骨骼多样性的原因

鱼类种类繁多。这种多样性是射线鳍鱼适应各种环境的能力的结果，使它们比其他脊椎动物的总和更加似是而非。有了这样的多样性，很容易忽略远亲鱼类之间的比较，以努力了解特定鱼类物种的生物学。然而，共享祖先和发育机制、形态特征和生理学的保护提供了使用不同生物之间的比较分析来理解发育和生理机制的能力。使用适合实验研究的物种提供了解决在其他“非模式”生物中不可行的问题的工具。例如，斑马鱼和青鳉等小型硬骨鱼的使用在分析人类疾病（包括骨骼疾病）的基因功能和机制方面具有强大的作用。然而，使用这些鱼来帮助了解其他鱼类的变异和疾病在很大程度上尚未得到探索。这在水产养殖研究中尤为明显。在这里，我们强调了这些小型实验室鱼类在研究农业条件下发生的骨骼畸形的遗传和发育因素方面的效用。我们强调了几个领域，其中模型物种可以作为一种资源，用于确定具有重要经济意义的鱼类物种变异的原因，以及评估减轻养殖鱼类中变异表型表达的策略。