The authors would like to thank those local fishermen who had helped collecting and rearing of the puffer fish. We were also grateful to the Research Committee of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for supporting this research, which was carried out by the first author in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a Ph.D. Lastly the constructive suggestions and recommendations from the two anonymous reviewers were very much appreciated to improve the overall readability of this manuscript.

　

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