You may be surprised by the organism that in recent years has become one of the hottest topics of biological research - the zebra danio or Danio rerio of the scientific literature.  Those of you who have maintained a fish tank as a hobby, or just for the sake of having 'easy' pets, will attest to how easy it is to breed zebrafish.  Ease of breeding is a major reason why the field of developmental genetics has chosen the zebrafish as its premier 'model system' for the study of vertebrate development.  Mus musculus move over, zebra danio is here! 
The Biology Department is fortunate to have recruited to its faculty one of the world's expert zebrafish breeders and investigators, Dr. Rolf Karlstrom. 

Rolf has established a zebrafish breeding facility in the Biology Department at UMass Amherst and is developing his research projects around that resource.  Besides his research on the nervous system of the zebrafish, Professor Karlstrom is widely known for his motion pictures of zebrafish embryogenesis.  An excerpt of that process can be viewed by visiting Rolf's web site, URL: http://www.bio.umass.edu/biology/karlstrom/karlstrom.mov.  The objective of the superb cinematography is to enable one to be so thoroughly versed with development of the zebrafish that any deviations from the usual pattern will be immediately obvious.  Rolf's zebrafish cinematography was featured in a "Nature" segment on PBS this spring.
A measure of local respect has already been gained for the zebrafish.  The investigators of the Five College area who use Drosophila as their experimental organism have renamed their Flyclub the "Flyfishing Journal Club".  This group holds intellectually stimulating weekly meetings to discuss the latest research in neurobiology, genetics and development of Drosophila and now the zebrafish.  The meetings attract undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, and faculty.