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.
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