Sunday 12 June 2016

Secret lives of Amazonian fishes revealed by chemicals stored in their ear-stones


June 7, 2016

Fish species that are both economically and ecologically important in South America live mysterious lives.

Scientists know relatively little about the thousands of fish species living in the world's largest river system—from the primitive, boney-tongued Arapaima that is the largest fish in the Amazon to giant catfishes that undertake some of the longest migrations of any freshwater fishes in the world.

"These species have the potential to disappear if we don't learn more about them. We know next to nothing about many of them even though many are being harvested at alarming rates," said Ted Hermann, a doctoral student in fisheries science at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) in Syracuse, New York. "This is a unique ecosystem and some of these fishes are enormous animals. And they might be gone in a matter of decades."

To that end, Hermann and three co-authors published a study today (June 8, 2016) in the new online journal,Royal Society Open Science, that reports on the use of chemical analysis of ear-stones or "otoliths" as a way to tease out a fish's life story, potentially revealing its migratory routes and the environments it encountered in its travels. The paper, titled "Unravelling the life history of Amazonian fishes through otolith microchemistry," describes the identification of chemical markers that can trace a fish back to the Amazon estuary and to "black water" vs. "white water" rivers. Another marker reveals that at least one species, the Amazonian corvina, may not be as sedentary as previously believed, raising new questions about how best to ensure the long-term survival of this economically important fish.




No comments:

Post a Comment

You only need to enter your comment once! Comments will appear once they have been moderated. This is so as to stop the would-be comedian who has been spamming the comments here with inane and often offensive remarks. You know who you are!

Related Posts with Thumbnails

ShareThis