Eel

Interesting Facts

Japanese eels, Anguilla japonica, can surmount a 46-m-high natural waterfall.

Matsushige, Kazuki, Yusuke Hibino, Yoshiya Yasutake, and Noritaka Mochioka. “Japanese Eels, Anguilla Japonica, Can Surmount a 46-M-High Natural Waterfall of the Amikake River System of Kyushu Island, Japan.” Ichthyological Research 68, no. 1 (2021): 21–31. https://doi.org/10/g62g23.

In Switzerland, specimens have been taken in waters at an altitude of 3000 feet (925m) above the level of the sea.

Schmidt, Johs. “The Breeding Places of the Eel.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Containing Papers of a Biological Character 211, no. 382–390 (1923): 179–208. https://doi.org/10/dc9gpq.

"Given their catadromous life-cycle, and global commercial and cultural importance, as a taxa, anguillid eels can act as indicator, umbrella and flagship species, and a comprehensive surrogate for conservation of freshwater biodiversity."

Itakura, Hikaru, Ryoshiro Wakiya, Matthew Gollock, and Kenzo Kaifu. “Anguillid Eels as a Surrogate Species for Conservation of Freshwater Biodiversity in Japan.” Scientific Reports 10, no. 1 (2020): 8790. https://doi.org/10/jknd.

Regarding Anguilla megastoma (Polynesian eel), from IUCN Red List note: "Many are found at higher altitudes – the indigenous name in Tahiti is puhi-mauá (eel of the mountains) – and Schmidt (1927) reported that this species can traverse obstacles by leaving the water and crawling over the moist terrain. Individuals sampled in Lake Letas, 7 km inland on Gaua Island, Vanuatu, must have overcome Siri Falls (120 m high) as elvers in order to reside there."

In Australia, elvers make a journey around the 140 metre tall Warragamba Dam to Lake Burragorang. Scientists track amazing eel migration

List of Species

A. oelebesensis
A. interioris
A. megastoma
A. anoestralis
A. nebulosa nebulosa
A. nebulosa labiata
A. marmorata
A. reinhardtii
A. borneensis
A. japonioa
A. rostrata
A. anguilla
A. dieffenbaohii
A. mossambioa
A. bioolor paoifioa
A. bioolor bioolor
A. obsoura
A. australis australis
A. australis sohmidtii

Aoyama, Jun. ‘Origin and Evolution of the Freshwater Eels, Genus Anguilla’. In Eel Biology, edited by Katsumi Aida, Katsumi Tsukamoto, and Katsumi Yamauchi. Tokyo: Springer, 2003.

Known or suspected spawning sites for well-studied Anguilla spp.: 1, A. anguilla; 2, A. australis; 3, A. bengalensis; 4, A. celebesensis; 5, A. dieffenbachii; 6, A. japonica; 7, A. marmorata; 8, A. mossambica; 9, A. reinhardtii; 10, A. rostrata. The coasts of regions colonized by them are shaded grey. Warm currents that are likely to carry larval Anguilla spp. from spawning areas to the growth habitat are shown by arrows.

Watanabe, Shun. ‘Taxonomy of the Freshwater Eels, Genus Anguilla Schrank, 1798’. In Eel Biology, edited by Katsumi Aida, Katsumi Tsukamoto, and Katsumi Yamauchi, 3–18. Tokyo: Springer, 2003.

Righton, David, Kim Aarestrup, Don Jellyman, Phillipe Sébert, Guido van den Thillart, and Katsumi Tsukamoto. ‘The Anguilla Spp. Migration Problem: 40 Million Years of Evolution and Two Millennia of Speculation’. Journal of Fish Biology 81, no. 2 (2012): 365–86. https://doi.org/10/f35nf8.

Righton, David, Kim Aarestrup, Don Jellyman, Phillipe Sébert, Guido Van Den Thillart, and Katsumi Tsukamoto. ‘Extreme Swimming: The Oceanic Migrations of Anguillids’. In Swimming Physiology of Fish, edited by Arjan P. Palstra and Josep V. Planas, 19–44. Berlin: Springer, 2013.

The traditional eel fishery at Lake Condah and its historical and cultural significance to the Gunditjmara people.

Rose, Denis, Damein Bell, and David A. Crook. “Restoring Habitat and Cultural Practice in Australia’s Oldest and Largest Traditional Aquaculture System.” Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 26, no. 3 (September 1, 2016): 589–600. https://doi.org/10/gf7spf.

Issues

non-cuddly species
moral status (sentience, pain)
hard-to-study systems (ocean as a hard-to-access environment, large size)
distributed systems (connectivity and reproductive migrations)
forms of life in need of drastic reframing (from food to kin)
long-duration systems
loss of cultures (e.g., eels on the river Thames have lost the culture for going upstream) 1
need to monitor all stages of complex life histories (but there are successful citizen science examples)2

Food

Kemmerer, Lisa. “Ethics and Eating Fishes.” Journal of International Wildlife Law & Policy 19, no. 3 (2016): 203–18. https://doi.org/10/g3xnkt.

Kemmerer, Lisa. “If You Care About Anymals, Do Not Fish (or Eat Fishes) *.” In New Omnivorism and Strict Veganism, edited by Cheryl Abbate and Christopher Bobier, 179–97. New York: Routledge, 2023.

Evolution

Evolution of the eel – a matter of continental drift

Ecology, Relationships, Processes, Niche Construction and Lifeworlds

Coevolution and Mutualisms

Interpret as give and take in diverse worlds, moving beyond mechanistic explanations to consider eel relations as forms of politics, economy, culture and expertise, at least as seriously taken provocations. Comparative infection experiments involving Japanese and European eels showed differences in immune defence, reflecting coevolution versus an abrupt host switch. This is interesting as an example of rapture,

In the Baltic, eels formed close association with eelgrass habitats (seagrass meadows).3

Parasite Coevolution

Evidence suggests coevolution between the nematode genus Anguillicola and four Indo-Pacific eel species that ac-t as hosts.4 This is an interesting example of how anthropogenic relocation results in a rupture and a "sacrifice zone" or a "dissonance field".5

Niche Segregation/Partitioning

Differences in migratory and movement patterns between the two freshwater and marine eel species lead to niche segregation in the brackish bay where they coexist. It is possible that the catadromous behaviour of anguillid eels may have evolved as an adaptation to avoid competition with marine eels such that the interspecific competition drove their life history shift into freshwater habitats.6 This is an example of compromise and negotiations between nonhuman beings.

Similarly, species A. marmorata utilizes clear, fast-flowing mainstems and tributaries with larger substrates, while the temperate species A. japonica prefers stagnant, muddy estuaries, backwater areas, and reservoirs. Such niche partitioning allows the two species to coexist by reducing competition due to their similar niches, suggesting an interspecies relationship mediated by resource use.7 A similar partitioning occurs in Taiwan.8

Movement Ecology

Station keeping takes place within the home range of the animal and corresponds to simple movements for foraging and predation avoidance.

Ranging and migration occur outside the home range.

Ranging: the search for a resource (mate, food, etc.). Stops when the resource is found.

Migration: triggered by physiological and environmental cues and not by the search for a resource. It affects most individuals in the population, occurs over a long timescale, requires orientation and suggests a return journey.

Diadromous fish, such as eels, undergo two long migrations.

From the spawning grounds to growth habitat, includes active upstream migration in river catchments during the early years of their continental life stage.

During the second migration eels return to the oceanic spawning grounds from their growth habitats in rivers or coastal waters.

Eels may also move between different habitats during their continental stage, movements which correspond to station keeping and ranging.

Drouineau, Hilaire, Caroline Durif, Martin Castonguay, Maria Mateo, Eric Rochard, Guy Verreault, Kazuki Yokouchi, and Patrick Lambert. “Freshwater Eels: A Symbol of the Effects of Global Change.” Fish and Fisheries 19, no. 5 (2018): 903–30. https://doi.org/10/gns2r3.

Sentience and Cognition

There is quite a bit of research on the Japanese eel behaviour by Watanabe, e.g.:

Watanabe, Shigeru. “Spatial Learning in Japanese Eels Using Extra- and Intra-Maze Cues.” Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2020): 01350. https://doi.org/10/g5twt7.

Geographies

European

Confirms the importance of the Mediterranean rivers.

Amilhat, Elsa, Kim Aarestrup, Elisabeth Faliex, Gaël Simon, Håkan Westerberg, and David Righton. ‘First Evidence of European Eels Exiting the Mediterranean Sea During Their Spawning Migration’. Scientific Reports 6, no. 1 (2016): 21817. https://doi.org/10/f9k7gm.

Australian

Koster, Wayne M., Kim Aarestrup, Kim Birnie-Gauvin, Ben Church, David Dawson, Jarod Lyon, Justin O’Connor, et al. ‘First Tracking of the Oceanic Spawning Migrations of Australasian Short-Finned Eels (Anguilla australis)’. Scientific Reports 11, no. 1 (2021): 22976. https://doi.org/10/gn77qh.

Is this Australia's most hardcore animal?

Eels can travel over land, climb walls and take down serious prey. They are also known as catadromous, which means they live in freshwater but migrate to the ocean to breed. There are two common eel species in Australia: the short-finned eel (Anguilla australis) and the long-finned eel (Anguilla reinhardtii). Both species spawn in the Coral Sea, near the Great Barrier Reef, after swimming thousands of kilometres from the east coast of Australia and New Zealand. This is one of the most epic migrations known within Australian waters, but the exact location of their breeding grounds remains a mystery. Scientists are trying to track eels with satellites to understand their migration better. Eels can live for decades in freshwater or estuaries before they return to the ocean to breed once and die. They are an important food source for many animals, such as sharks and whales, as well as humans4. Eels are also culturally significant for some Indigenous groups, who have been harvesting them for thousands of years.

Fishing

In Victoria, there is finishing for eels and a 2017 management plan.

Eels of Elizabeth Street in Melbourne

(Jefa Greenaway, Judith Alcorn, Mark Gillingham, landscape architect)

Wurundjeri elder Dave Wandin reckons eels moving through Melbourne drains is an urban legend, but he’s not about to rule it out completely.

One eel of a story: the slippery truth of a fishy underground migration (The Age)

American

Tracking American eels on the open sea to crack the mystery of their migration

The Secret Life of Eels

Ecosystem Engineering, Niche Construction, and Habitat Modification

The American Eel plays an important role in the structure of tropical lotic food webs through top-down effects that are potentially augmented by in-stream barriers, linking the eel's role to habitat features.9

The migration of Anguillid Eels facilitates connections and relationships throughout water systems, facilitating the movement of nutrients and energy within ecosystems.10^,11^,12^,13

American eels construct burrows by forcing their heads and bodies into the substrate with rapid undulations, which is a form of bioturbation that changes the physical habitat. Can form craters or mounds around the burrow openings, representing physical alterations to the sediment surface. Eel burrows observed in both laboratory and field settings can have up to five openings, creating complex, multi-holed structures.14

Japanese eels selectively feed on infaunal organisms, possibly by digging up burrowing prey into the water column, a behaviour that would change the sediment and potentially impact the benthic community. Can construct burrows up to 30 cm deep, covering the usual depths of many macrobenthic invertebrates and implying a significant physical interaction with the estuarine substrate.15

Eels select particular substrates. European eel elvers prefer coarse gravel, suggesting that conservation efforts may benefit from targeting this type of substratum in marine coastal areas.16 Anguillid eels use mud as a substrate refuge only in the absence of substrate cavities, and that the winter distribution of eels in coastal bay and estuarine habitat is limited to waters warmer than the freezing point of fish tissue (~–0.7°C).17

Human Impact

Drouineau, Hilaire, Caroline Durif, Martin Castonguay, Maria Mateo, Eric Rochard, Guy Verreault, Kazuki Yokouchi, and Patrick Lambert. ‘Freshwater Eels: A Symbol of the Effects of Global Change’. Fish and Fisheries 19, no. 5 (2018): 903–30. https://doi.org/10/gns2r3.

Rose, Denis, Damein Bell, and David A. Crook. ‘Restoring Habitat and Cultural Practice in Australia’s Oldest and Largest Traditional Aquaculture System’. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries 26, no. 3 (1 September 2016): 589–600. https://doi.org/10/gf7spf.

Turbines

Buysse, David, Ans M. Mouton, Maarten Stevens, Tom Van den Neucker, and Johan Coeck. ‘Mortality of European Eel After Downstream Migration Through Two Types of Pumping Stations’. Fisheries Management and Ecology 21, no. 1 (2014): 13–21. https://doi.org/10/gswm6h.

Human-Eel Relationships

Rice-eel co-culture.

Eel reintroduction to control invasive fish.

Consider “zones of sympatry” where humans and eels have coexisted for a long time, e.g., since the Pleistocene.

Harris, Cornelia B., Alandeom W. Oliveira, Brett L. M. Levy, Alan R. Berkowitz, and Chris Bowser. ‘The Eel Connection: Developing Urban Adolescents’ Sense of Place Through Outdoor Interactions with a Local Organism’. The Journal of Environmental Education 54, no. 4 (2023): 241–64. https://doi.org/10/gswmzr.

Jensen, Casper Bruun. ‘The Anthropocene Eel: Emergent Knowledge, Ontological Politics and New Propositions for an Age of Extinctions’. Anthropocenes – Human, Inhuman, Posthuman 1, no. 1 (2020): 1–11. https://doi.org/10/gswkph.

Boswell, Anna. “The Sensible Order of the Eel.” Settler Colonial Studies 5, no. 4 (2015): 363–74. https://doi.org/10/g4jpm5.

As Food

Long View

Long relationships of eels with humans, including multiple species of Homo provide a rare lens into the landscape use, modification, population migration and place practices. This related to food but also other human-nonhuman interactions and place-change.

Human-environment feedback systems with important biodiversity consequences are likely a recurrent feature of the Late Pleistocene, perhaps with even deeper roots. Of course, nonhuman living beings modify niches too.18

92,000 in Malawi, human activities, for example modified fire regimes relaxed seasonal constraints on ignitions, influencing vegetation composition and erosion. In tandem with climate-driven changes in precipitation this led to an ecological transition to an early, pre-agricultural anthropogenic landscape.19

Other species of homo have lived, fished for and eaten eels (along with many other species of fish) for a period of 500,000 to 45,000 years (in Andalusia, Spain).20^,21^,22

Middle Pleistocene hominins, including Homo heidelbergensis and Homo neanderthalensis, had nutritional requirements comparable to Homo sapiens and benefitted from eels-as-food availability in river valleys and floodplains. Eels (Anguilla), were available throughout the year in the floodplain landscape and provided a high-fat, high-carbohydrate food source for hominins to maintain their protein-to-calorie balance.23

Human modification of the landscape, specifically in relation to eel aquaculture and management, began around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, with more obvious indications appearing about 4000 years ago in Victoria, Australia.24

Details of significant environmental changes on Mangaia, Cook Islands, initiated by Polynesian colonization around 2500 to 1800 years ago, including major forest clearance, increased erosion, and species extinctions, demonstrate substantial human modification of the landscape. Prehistoric Mangaians heavily exploited freshwater eels (Anguilla sp.), suggesting resource exploitation that coincided with environmental change.

European eels were harvested by Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples in the western Baltic over millennia, but the major decline of 98% in the eel population has occurred since 1980. There is a long-term connection between pre-modern humans, anguillid eels, and eelgrass habitats (seagrass meadows).3

Now and into the Future

Prohibitions on the use as food:

Leach, B. Foss, Janet M. Davidson, and Fiona J. Teal. “Freshwater and Marine Eels in the Pacific and New Zealand: Food Avoidance Behaviour and Prohibitions.” Archaeofauna 31 (2022): 11–56. https://doi.org/10/g62jv9.

Japan

In 2012: "The Japanese nation has a long history of using freshwater eels as food, and these days up to ~100,000 t of eels per year are consumed there, about 70 % of the world’s eel consumption."

Kuroki, Mari, Martien J. P. van Oijen, and Katsumi Tsukamoto. “Eels and the Japanese: An Inseparable, Long-Standing Relationship.” In Eels and Humans, edited by Katsumi Tsukamoto and Mari Kuroki, 91–108. Tokyo: Springer, 2014.

Matsushige, Kazuki, and Yusuke Hibino. “Exploring Recent Japanese Public Perception of Freshwater Eels of the Genus Anguilla Using Content Analysis of Newspaper Coverage.” Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems 35, no. 7 (2025): e70164. https://doi.org/10/g9s22g.

Hamidoghli, Ali, Jinho Bae, Seonghun Won, Seunghan Lee, Dae-Jung Kim, and Sungchul C. Bai. “A Review on Japanese Eel (Anguilla japonica) Aquaculture, with Special Emphasis on Nutrition.” Reviews in Fisheries Science & Aquaculture 27, no. 2 (2019): 226–41. https://doi.org/10/g9s24h.

Fishing, Aquaculture, and Trade

Alonso, Aitor Ibáñez, and Daan P. van Uhm. “The Illegal Trade in European Eels: Outsourcing, Funding, and Complex Symbiotic-Antithetical Relationships.” Trends in Organized Crime 26, no. 3 (2023): 293–307. https://doi.org/10/gt76v8.

Yuan, Yuan, Yongming Yuan, Yunyun Dai, Yunchong Gong, and Yiqun Yuan. “Development Status and Trends in the Eel Farming Industry in Asia.” North American Journal of Aquaculture 84, no. 1 (2022): 3–17. https://doi.org/10/gjkbmp.

Shiraishi, Hiromi, Yu-San Han, and Kenzo Kaifu. “Eel Consumption in Japan: Insights from Genetic Species Identification and Trade Data.” Fisheries Science, 2025. https://doi.org/10/g9s27z.

Design and Conservation Initiatives

Measures:

remove barriers to migration, fish pass design, guidance on pass design (UK), advice on passes and other measures (UK), commercial services, eel tiles
raise public awareness about the importance of safeguarding eel habitats

Organisations:

Welfare, Sentience, Stress, and Pain

Cf. Aquaculture, Welfare, and Ethics

There is literature on neck cutting and electrocution of eels in slaugher.

Welfare implications of live chilling and freezing of farmed eels including the time to reach unconsciousness, based on ECGs and pain responses.

Lambooij, Elbert, Jan Willem van de Vis, Robert Jan Kloosterboer, and Cornelis Pieterse. “Welfare Aspects of Live Chilling and Freezing of Farmed Eel (Anguilla anguilla L.): Neurological and Behavioural Assessment.” Aquaculture 210, no. 1 (2002): 159–69. https://doi.org/10/b2p6gb.

Farmed and wild-caught eels may be exposed to many stressful and painful experiences, including injuries and mortalities.

Vettese, Troy, Becca Franks, and Jennifer Jacquet. “The Great Fish Pain Debate.” Issues in Science and Technology 36, no. 4 (2020): 49–53.

Trafficking

Pons-Hernandez, Monica. “‘Missing the Trees for the Forest?’ An Analysis of the Harms to European Eels Caused by Their Trafficking and Trade.” Critical Criminology 32, no. 1 (2024): 77–95. https://doi.org/10/gt9fjn.

Pons-Hernandez, Monica. “Inside the Slippery World of Glass Eel Trafficking: Lessons Learned from Spain to Prevent the Illegal Trade of European Eels.” European Journal of Criminology, 2024, 14773708241262885. https://doi.org/10/gt9fjq.

Research Approaches

Humanities

Some references on ethnographic and similar approaches to hidden and watery creatures.

Alaimo, Stacy. “The Anthropocene at Sea: Temporality, Paradox, Compression.” In The Routledge Companion to the Environmental Humanities, edited by Ursula K. Heise, Jon Christensen, and Michelle Niemann, 153–61. London: Routledge, 2017.

Bastian, Michelle. “Whale Falls, Suspended Ground, and Extinctions Never Known.” Environmental Humanities 12, no. 2 (2020): 454–74. https://doi.org/10/gmwpvq.

Hale, Sadie E. “On Sharks Unseen: Oceanic Non-Encounters and Multispecies Ethnography.” Swamphen: A Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ) 10 (2024). https://doi.org/10/gt73sk.

Mueller, Martin Lee. Being Salmon, Being Human: Encountering the Wild in Us and Us in the Wild. White River Junction: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.

Swanson, Heather Anne. “Methods for Multispecies Anthropology: Thinking with Salmon Otoliths and Scales.” In Multiple Nature-Cultures, Diverse Anthropologies, edited by Casper Bruun Jensen and Atsuro Morita, 81–99. Berghahn Books, 2019.

Sciences

genetic analysis
eDNA
satellite tags
acoustic tags
stable isotope analysis
comparative morphology
behavioural observation
stomach content analysis

Mapes, Murray, and Emma Mouillot. “Taxonomic Challenges and Advances in Eel Family Classification: Integrating Multidisciplinary Approaches.” FishTaxa - Journal of Fish Taxonomy 29 (2023): 24–35.

See Data Acquisition

Proposals and Future

Gansworth, Kristi Leora, and Christopher H. Bowser. “An Anguillid Lens: How Eels Reconnect People and Waterways.” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5 (2024): 1270644. https://doi.org/10/g3xfxw.

Videos

Fishing (aka Killing or Harassing)

To sad to include...

Projects, Law, and Policy

DIASPARA Project: Unlocking the secrets of Europe's endangered Eel and Salmon

Stein, Florian Martin, Vincent Nijman, Mickey Chung Wai Lau, and Willem Dekker. “Eels: Uncertain Impacts of Proposed CITES Listings.” Oryx 59, no. 1 (2025): 12–13. https://doi.org/10/g9s22k.

Interspecies Relationships

^{"The Biter Bit, (an incident of Bird-life in New Zealand)"}

A Classified List of Mr. S. William Silver’s Collection of New Zealand Birds. With Walter L. Buller. London: E. A. Patherick and Co., 1888, p. 40.

Hosie, E. R. “Cormorant and Eels.” Emu 19, no. 3 (1920): 246. https://doi.org/10/bb747n.

Thomson, Donals. “Cormorant and Eels.” Emu 19, no. 3 (1920): 247. https://doi.org/10/bb747n.

Relationships with Humans

^{A Friendly Eel (16 October 1928)}

Images

^{Knights, S. (Samuel Salkeld) (1852). Natives spearing eels, on Back Creek, 1852.}

References

Arai, Takaomi, ed. Biology and Ecology of Anguillid Eels. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2016.

Fort, Tom. The Book of Eels: Their Lives, Secrets and Myths. Glasgow: William Collins, 2020.

Jellyman, Don J., and Andrew I. Stewart. ‘First Record of Male Freshwater Eels (Anguilla dieffenbachii) Caught at Sea’. New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research 53, no. 2 (2019): 288–91. https://doi.org/10/gswndr.

Prosek, James. Eels: An Exploration, from New Zealand to the Sargasso, of the World’s Most Amazing and Mysterious Fish. New York: Harper, 2010.

Schweid, Richard. Eel. London: Reaktion, 2009.

Shell, Ellen Ruppel. Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History, with Eels. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2024.

Svensson, Patrik. The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World. New York: Ecco, 2020.

Tesch, Friedrich-Wilhelm. The Eel. Edited by John E. Thorpe. Translated by Ray J. White. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Science, 2003.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi, and Mari Kuroki, eds. Eels and Humans. Tokyo: Springer, 2014.

Tsukamoto, Katsumi. Eel Science. Singapore: Springer, 2023.

Notes

Footnotes

Fort, Tom. The Book of Eels: Their Lives, Secrets and Myths. 2002. Reprint, Glasgow: William Collins, 2020. "But the elver run that had so delighted Edward Jesse, and brought the urchins out crying ‘eel-fare time’, has never been restored to its former glory. It may well be that the species’ collective awareness of safe sanctuary up the Thames system was extinguished by the barrier of London’s filth, and that the arriving infants were content with the habitat offered by the tidal sections. A study of Thames eel stocks carried out by Iain Naismith in the late 1980s indicated that the new blood penetrating upstream from the capital was nowhere near sufficient to maintain a dynamic population."˄
Pecorelli, Joe P., Kirsty H. Macphie, Charlotte Hebditch, Darry R. J. Clifton-Dey, Ian Thornhill, and Alison J. Debney. “Using Citizen Science to Improve the Conservation of the European Eel (Anguilla Anguilla) in the Thames River Basin District.” Freshwater Science 38, no. 2 (2019): 281–91. https://doi.org/10/gwmqgj.˄
Guiry, Eric, and Harry K. Robson. “Deep Antiquity of Seagrasses Supporting European Eel Fisheries in the Western Baltic.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 291, no. 2027 (n.d.): 20240674. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2024.0674.˄
Taraschewski, Horst. “Hosts and Parasites as Aliens.” Journal of Helminthology 80, no. 2 (2006): 99–128. https://doi.org/10.1079/JOH2006364.˄
San, Phyo Su, and Maya Kóvskaya. “Multispecies Mutualistic Resilience: Riverine Lifeworlds along the Irrawaddy River.” Forest and Society 10, no. 1 (2026): 406–31. https://doi.org/10.65844/2549-4333.1260.˄
Kaifu, Kenzo, Michael J. Miller, Jun Aoyama, Izumi Washitani, and Katsumi Tsukamoto. “Evidence of Niche Segregation between Freshwater Eels and Conger Eels in Kojima Bay, Japan.” Fisheries Science 79, no. 4 (2013): 593–603. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12562-013-0628-3.˄
Kumai, Yusuke, Mari Kuroki, and Kentaro Morita. “Influence of Environmental Parameters on Habitat Use by Sympatric Freshwater Eels Anguilla Marmorata and Anguilla Japonica on Yakushima Island, Japan.” Canadian Journal of Zoology 99, no. 12 (2021): 1020–27. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjz-2021-0125.˄
Hsu, Hsiang-Yi, Hsiao-Wei Chen, and Yu-San Han. “Habitat Partitioning and Its Possible Genetic Background between Two Sympatrically Distributed Eel Species in Taiwan.” Zoological Studies 58 (2019): e27. https://doi.org/10.6620/ZS.2019.58-27.˄
Engman, Augustin C., Jesse R. Fischer, Thomas J. Kwak, and Michael J. Walter. “Diurnal Feeding Behavior of the American Eel Anguilla Rostrata.” Food Webs 13 (2017): 27–29. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fooweb.2017.10.003.˄
Gansworth, Kristi Leora, and Christopher H. Bowser. “An Anguillid Lens: How Eels Reconnect People and Waterways.” Frontiers in Human Dynamics 5 (2024): 1270644. https://doi.org/10.3389/fhumd.2023.1270644.˄
O’Brien, Gordon C., Mathew Ross, Céline Hanzen, Vuyisile Dlamini, Robin Petersen, Gerhard J. Diedericks, and Matthew J. Burnett. “River Connectivity and Fish Migration Considerations in the Management of Multiple Stressors in South Africa.” Marine & Freshwater Research 70, no. 9 (2019): 1254–64. https://doi.org/10.1071/MF19183.˄
Baihaqi, Faqih, and Shafira Bilqis Annida. “Migratory Fishes in a Human-Dominated World: Drivers, Ecological Consequences, and Conservation Responses.” Egyptian Journal of Aquatic Biology and Fisheries 30, no. 2 (2026): 2975–3003. https://doi.org/10.21608/ejabf.2026.475862.7685.˄
Eberhardt, Alyson L., David M. Burdick, Michele Dionne, and Robert E. Vincent. “Rethinking the Freshwater Eel: Salt Marsh Trophic Support of the American Eel, Anguilla Rostrata.” Estuaries and Coasts 38, no. 4 (2015): 1251–61. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12237-015-9960-4.˄
Tomie, J. P. N., Cairns, D. K., & Courtenay, S. C. (2013). How American eels Anguilla rostrata construct and respire in burrows. Aquatic Biology, 19, 287–296. https://doi.org/10.3354/ab00538 ˄
Kan, Kotaro, Masanori Sato, and Kazuya Nagasawa. “Tidal-Flat Macrobenthos as Diets of the Japanese Eel Anguilla Japonica in Western Japan, with a Note on the Occurrence of a Parasitic Nematode Neliconema Anguillae in Eel Stomachs.” Zoological Science 33, no. 1 (2016): 50–62. https://doi.org/10.2108/zs150032.˄
Christoffersen, Mads, Jon C. Svendsen, Jesper A. Kuhn, Anders Nielsen, Anastasija Martjanova, and Josianne G. Støttrup. “Benthic Habitat Selection in Juvenile European Eel Anguilla Anguilla: Implications for Coastal Habitat Management and Restoration.” Journal of Fish Biology 93, no. 5 (2018): 996–99. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.13807.˄
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The Neanderthals lived in Andalucia from 500kya to about 45kya. Did the last of the Neanderthals meet modern humans?˄
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