Ichthyologists have described a new genus and species of electric knifefish from the Rio Negro, the Amazonia State of Brazil.
Procerusternarchus pixuna. Image credit: Cristina Cox Fernandes et al / University of Massachusetts Amherst.
The newly discovered electric fish, named Procerusternarchus pixuna, belongs to Gymnotiformes, a group of bony fishes commonly known as the Neotropical or South American knifefishes.
True to their name, these fish produce electric discharges in distinct pulses that can be detected by some other fish.
Procerusternarchus pixuna has been described in a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia. The paper provides information about its anatomy, range, relationship to other fish, salient features of its skeleton, coloration, electric organs and patterns of electric organ discharge.
“The discovery of this species is leading to a new interpretation of classifications and interrelationships among closely related groups. The diversity of electric fishes becomes more thoroughly documented, researchers will be able to explore possible causes of this group’s adaptive radiation over evolutionary time,” said lead author Prof Cristina Cox Fernandes from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“In the early 1990s,” Dr Fernandes said, when she began her studies of the communities and diversity of electric fishes, fewer than 100 species were then scientifically described. “But with the current studies by herself and others, the number has roughly doubled today.”
In 2013, Dr Fernandes and her colleagues co-authored a description of three other electric fishes.
“These fishes are of little commercial importance,” Dr Fernandes said, but in her opinion fishes of the Neotropics, especially in the Amazon, are still ‘under studied,’ and “more taxonomic studies such as the one are needed.”
“As environmental changes affect rivers worldwide and in the Amazon region, freshwater fauna are under many different pressures. Fish populations are dwindling due to the pollution, climate change, the construction of hydroelectric plants and other factors that result in habitat loss and modification. As such the need to document the current fish fauna has become all the more pressing.”
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Cristina Cox Fernandes et al. 2014. Procerusternarchus pixuna. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, vol. 163, no. 1
