What is covered in spines, lives in a log and has a jaguar’s spots? A newly described catfish, that’s what.
The murky waterways of the Amazon rainforest often produce species previously unknown to science. But some are weirder than others. The newest oddball was probably already circulating in the freshwater aquarium trade for years, but it hadn’t been formally classified.
Marcelo Rocha at the Amazonas State University in Brazil and his colleagues first gathered the fish on an expedition nearly a decade ago, and now the preserved specimens have finally received an official scientific description, verifying the catfish as a new species
Advertisement
The team found the fish in the Juruá and Nanay rivers, in Brazil and Peru respectively, squeezed within the crevices of submerged logs. It is a type of driftwood catfish, a family of South American catfishes that spend their days wedged into tight spaces in wood and rocks, only emerging at night to feed.
The new species is thumb-shaped, with the stumpy face of a salamander and skin patterned with jaguar-like rosettes. Prickles adorn its head. Its dorsal and two front fins have saw-like serrations.
The team named the fish Spinipterus moijiri. “Moijiri” is the name for the fish in Paumari, an indigenous language in Brazil.
The moijiri is a remarkable discovery because until now there was only one other catfish quite like it, says Bárbara Calegari, a driftwood catfish specialist at the PUCRS Museum of Science and Technology in Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Read more: A third of fish sold is mislabelled — here’s how to avoid being duped
Calegari says that the moijiri’s size is a surprise. It is about 10 centimetres long – roughly four times larger than the other known Spinipterus.
Several other, unrelated driftwood catfishes have jaguar-like spots, which suggests the pattern evolved independently, says Calegari.
Reports of other, similar fishes in the aquarium trade across South America show that there are probably many more species of driftwood catfishes waiting to be revealed, says Calegari.
Fish Biology
