As a graduate student, I began studying Asian fishes in Vietnam, Thailand and Laos as a member of The University of Michigan Mekong Basinwide Fishery Studies during 1974-76 under the direction of Prof. Karl F. Lagler. A few years later, as a member of the Irrigation Fishery Development Project, I studied the Gangetic fish fauna in Bangladesh. In 1983, I traveled to Gambia in west Africa, to prepare an illustrated key to the fishes of the Gambia River and Estuary, laying the scientific groundwork for a large biotic survey undertaken by the Great Lakes Research Laboratory of the University of Michigan . This was followed by four grants from the Mekong River Commission to continue that research on a broader scale throughout the countries of the Lower Mekong Basin. I spent two winters surveying the Cambodian fauna and wrote an illustrated key which is being used by fishery scientists and other biologists there.
Current studies involve specimens collected in Laos and Vietnam during the three subsequent years.
Many of these specimens represent species that are new to science. I am always eager to have interested students participate in identification of new species in my lab. Cyprinid fishes of Southeast Asia. Chapman and Hall, London. Mayden, R. L., W. J. Rainboth, and D. G. Buth. 1991.