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Freshwater Species of the Week
Water Currents previously reported on Donald Stewart‘s ongoing efforts to reclassify a giant Amazonian fish as representing several distinct species. The work of the fish biologist at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF) is supported in part by National Geographic.
Stewart’s latest work has just been published in the journalCopeia, and marks official identification of Arapaima leptosoma,the first entirely new species of arapaima since 1847.
Among the world’s largest freshwater fish, arapaimas live in tropical South America, especially Brazil and Guyana. They can grow up to 10 feet (3 meters) long and weigh 440 pounds (200 kilograms). They breathe air through a primitive lung, and tend to live in oxygen-poor backwaters.
Arapaimas have long been an important food source for Amazonian peoples. They continue to be hunted and biologists have concerns about their status, although they are not endangered.
Getting the new species named is important “because it brings attention to the diversity of arapaimas that is out there and that needs to be collected and studied,” said Stewart. “Hopefully it will get more people in Brazil looking more closely at what’s swimming around out there.”
Read more at NG
Grimpachi
reply to post by 727Sky
That's interesting. From South America to SE Asia. Are you sure the ones you have are not a different species?
They are freshwater so that is a hell of a leap.
The authors claim is bogus.A subspecies at best.
Grimpachi
reply to post by 13th Zodiac
The authors claim is bogus.A subspecies at best.
You know that little link down at the bottom of the OP when you click on it you can then read more about the subject. It would probably keep you from making uninformed statements like the one you just made.
I feel like you just did the same thing a good many people did in this thread.learning lesson
For a century and a half, the prevailing view among scientists had been that there was only one species of arapaima, but Stewart has shown that there are actually at least five. In March, he published a paper that renamed a species of arapaima that had been suspected in the 1800s, before scientists decided to roll it up into one species.
The newest species, Arapaima leptosoma, had not been suspected before. It is more slender than other arapaimas (it’s name leptosoma is a reference to this characteristic).
Stewart explained that the new species also has a horizontal black bar on the side of its head, which is a unique series of sensory organs.
The new species was described from a specimen kept at the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia in Manaus, Brazil. That animal had been collected in 2001 near the confluence of the Solimões and Purus rivers in Amazonas State, Brazil.