Two new species of fish were recently documented in the Amazon. Due to deforestation, they are on the brink of extinction
Murilo N.L. Pastana and Willian M. Oharaat Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington DC set out with a group of colleagues to search for fish in less explored regions of the Amazon River basin, he didn’t know what they would find. A few days into their 2015 expedition, Pastana pulled a net from the water and was surprised to see small, vibrant orange fish in the plastic netting.
“We knew right away that this fish was different,” says Pastana. “We were so excited, like little kids.”, was plucked from a blackwater stream in Brazil’s Apuí region. The researchers then combed the surrounding area to see if the fish lived elsewhere. That is when they found a second entirely new fish species among the tangled tree roots of a muddy stream bank. “I said, ‘Wait! There are two’,” says Pastana.
Unlike the orange fish they had found previously, this new specimen shared the subtle yellow-brown coloration of other fishes in the area. Once a lab analysis confirmed the new species, the team named the 2-centimeter-long fishPoecilocharax rhizophilus are just 2 centimetres in lengthGenetic analyses have since verified that both fish are within the genus, a subgroup of small freshwater fish known as South American darters. The species are the first additions to the genus since 1965.
In 2016, Pastana and his colleagues returned to carry out another extensive search, which confirmed what he had feared:P. rhizophilusIn the six years since that exhibition, the forest home of the two fish species has been razed to make space for livestock, crops, and gold mining – all of which decimate native flora and fauna.
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