fish
grrlscientist | March 3, 2007
Can you see the flounder?
Orphaned Image. Please contact me to receive proper credit.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other life…
grrlscientist | March 2, 2007This video, below the fold, tells the story of a man whose penis became the temporary home for the candiru fish, a parasitic fish that lives off its host's blood. Do I think this is fact or fiction? Actually, I am not sure what to think, even though I've been told in the past that this is fiction.
grrlscientist | February 26, 2007
Have you heard about the amazing ice fish? One of the extraordinary evolutionary adaptations found in the extreme Antarctic cold is found in the ice fish. The fish has no red blood cells and no hemoglobin, so its blood plasma flows more freely. The oxygen that its muscles need simply dissolves in the plasma. [photo source: BBC News]
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tags: ice fish, Antarctica
jlynch | January 24, 2007
This little beauty is a new species of Pemelodus catfish. P. tetramerus was described from the Rio Tapajos and Rio Tocatins in Brazil. It is related to the Pictus catfish that are available in many fish stores.
grrlscientist | January 16, 2007
A couple of grunion on a sandy beach, spawning.
The photographer said, "I like how colorful they turn out to be - honestly, when you're standing there looking at them late at night with flashlights they don't look much more than gray." This photo is one of a series.
Image: Carl Manaster.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We…
jlynch | January 9, 2007
Otocinclus batmani
O. batmani is a new species of loricariid catfish native to the Rio Pure in Colombia and two creeks draining into the Rio Amazonas near Iquitos in Peru. The specific name ("batmani") is in honor of Batman and is due to the bat-like black markings in the tail (source).
Ref: Lehmann, PA (2006) "Otocinclus batmani, a new species of hypoptopomatine catfish (Siluriformes: Loricariidae) from Colombia and Peru" Neotropical Ichthyology 4(4): 379-383.
jlynch | December 20, 2006
Regular readers may remember that I have a softspot for catfish and earlier this year purchased a lace catfish (Synodontis nigrita), a species native to many African countries. The genus Synodontis (Cuvier 1816) is interesting for a number
of reasons. For example, S. multipunctatus (the gorgeous fish pictured above) is the only fish known to practice brood parasitism: it manages to mix it eggs with those of mouthbrooding cichlids in Lake Tanganyika, its larvae grow faster than those of the host and feed on them.
Lake Tanganyika is, of course, famous for the cichlids which have been studied…
jlynch | November 23, 2006
I'm sure that this Thanksgiving many of us are gorged on turkey. As a respite, I give you the above ... a European record wels catfish, Silurus glanis, all 8 foot and 226lbs of it.
mikethemadbiologist | October 16, 2006
A while ago, I posted about the lionfish invasion of the Atlantic Northeast. Here's a really good post about our Benevolent Lionfish Overlords.
jlynch | October 12, 2006 While I'm at it, here's another new species. In this case, it is a catfish from Mexico, Lacantunia enigmatica, which has a number of distinguishing characteristics. As the abstract to the description [pdf] states:
A new family (Lacantuniidae), genus and species of catfish, Lacantunia enigmatica, is described from the RÃo Usumacinta basin of Chiapas, México. This odd siluriform is diagnosed by five distinctively autapomorphic and anatomically complex structures. ... Lacantunia enigmatica cannot be placed within or as a basal sister lineage to any known catfish family or multifamily clade…
jlynch | September 22, 2006
An Atlantic tripletail caught in the Bristol Channel this week may be the first recorded occurrence of the species in Britain.
The Atlantic tripletail, Lobotes surinamensis, is found in tropical and subtropical waters around the world, but is exceptionally rare north of the Mediterranean Sea. Experts believe that the catch is another indication that subtropical fishes are migrating into the temperate waters of the UK as temperatures rise due to global warming.
More here.
jlynch | September 18, 2006
Hemiscyillum sp., recently discovered off the coast of Indonesia. This little puppy walks on its pectoral fins as do other epaulette sharks of the genus. For more on the find, see here. Apparently, epaulette sharks make good aquarium denizens.
jlynch | September 12, 2006
A fisherman who speared a protected species of grouper while diving off Florida has been killed after the fish swam into a hole and entangled him in the line attached to the speargun. <
A 42-year-old Florida man, who has not been named, was free-diving in 7.6m/25' of water off the lower Florida Keys this weekend when he speared a Goliath grouper, Epinephalus itajara.
According to a report from Reuters, Detective Mark Coleman said that police divers had found the speared fish tightly wedged in a hole with the man's body entangled in the spear line: "It looks like the fish wrapped the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 9, 2006
This is really odd: there just might be a stable population of lionfish off the cost of Long Island. Many moons ago, I used to be a marine ecologist, and I would have never considered the notion that a tropical fish would be able to maintain an overwintering population even in Long Island Sound (which is a little warmer than the Atlantic Ocean). It's not clear if the population actually overwinters, since mostly juveniles have been found; however, the number of juveniles suggests that there is more than one breeding female. I'm wondering if there is the possibility that a cold-tolerant…
jlynch | August 18, 2006Bought some more catfish today. I've now got two tanks going, so I decided to go with a few more South American species - three Emerald cats (Brochis splendens Castelnau, 1855) and a single pictus cat (Pimelodus pictus Steindachner, 1876). The former are in my main tank with the peppered corys (Corydoras paleatus), lace catfish (Syonodontis nigrita), the plec (Hypostomus plecostomus), and some smaller fish, while the pictus is in another tank with the eclipse cat (Horabagrus brachysoma). If I had my way, I'd have big tanks full of catfish.
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2006Here's a neat post about toad fish and booming drums. Pretty cool.
jlynch | April 12, 2006
I haven't catfish blogged in a while, so this is worthwhile. Another article in today's Nature is of interest. In this one, the authors describe the ability of the eel catfish, Channallabes apus to forage onland. Importantly, they note that the species' "capacity to bend its head down towards the ground while feeding seems to be an essential feature that may have enabled fish to make the transition from an aquatic to a terrestrial mode" and go on to point out that the species and others such as Ichthyostega, the recently described Tiktaalik, and terrestrially feeding Periophthalminae (…
jlynch | March 11, 2006
Catfish are a fairly diverse group of fish, familar to aquarium keepers and fans of fried food. They vary in size from the over two meter long Giant Mekong Catfish (Pangasius gigas; a record 646 pound specimen is above) to a finger-length parasitic species, the candiru (Vandellia cirrhosa, see below). Thanks to a reminder by Tara (and ultimately, PZ), it's the candiru that I want to write about today.
The candiru (as Fishbase notes) "[e]nters the gill cavity of larger fish to suck blood ... Forces itself under the gill cover of host fish to enter gill chamber during ventilation of the…
jlynch | March 6, 2006A few weeks ago, I noted that I had bought a lace catfish Syonodontis nigrita for my aquarium. The little guy doesn't come out often, preferring the evenings, but he sure is a nice looking fish. Somewhat strangely, he likes to spend time inverted among the plants, wedging himself down near the roots. It took me a while to realize that he wasn't dead! Below is a picture of a lace catfish [click for larger version].
So, my interest was peeked when I noticed that two researchers at Cornell recently described a new species of Syonodontid, Synodontis acanthoperca from Gabon. What's interesting…
jlynch | February 11, 2006Went and bought some new fish for my tank today - a sun catfish (Horabagrus brachysoma) and a lace catfish (Synodontis sp.). I admit to having a certain liking for catfish species. These two will join my peppered corys (Corydoras paleatus) and common plec (Hypostomus punctatus) at the bottom of the tank, while the top and mid-layers have a mixture of danios, guppies and swordtails. I think I need a bigger tank :)