I hate when crap like this happens. This will only give fodder to my husband's 'why Bigfoot is real' theories. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! OK, how does this many different species get overlooked for so long in such an inhabited locale? 57 New Freshwater Fish Species Found in Europe Europe's rivers and lakes boast at least 57 more freshwater fish species than previously thought, scientists have announced. The new species were discovered during a seven-year assessment of the conservation status of freshwater fish in Europe that was conducted in collaboration with the World Conservation Union (IUCN). And the study authors say many more undescribed fish have been found or are suspected to exist, potentially taking the total number of confirmed species to 600 or higher. "The new species come from all over" Europe, said co-author Jörg Freyhof of the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin, Germany. Freyhof and co-author Maurice Kottelat from Cornol, Switzerland, present their data in the Handbook of European Freshwater Fishes. Data from the handbook, which was released in early November, also determined that more than a third of Europe's 522 freshwater fish species are at risk of extinction and that 12 species are already extinct. The newly described species include the world's smallest known cisco—a type of whitefish—that was found in Germany's Lake Stechlin, north of Berlin. The silvery pink fish, dubbed Coregonus fontanae, was found to be distinct from a much larger cisco species from the same lake. Two new species of troutlike charr were discovered in alpine lakes in Germany and Switzerland. The study team also named eight new sculpin, a type of small, squat river fish often found under stones....
Spuriousmonkey was releasing those things when he couldn't keep them in his lab any longer. They are his experiments I'm certain!
Perhaps they look similar enough to their closest relatives that they are mistaken for them. Bigfoot on the other hand is supposed to be a tad more bipedal than the average deer Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Yeah, I was wondering how they missed so many for so long. Could it be due to the fall of the iron curtain??
New species seem to be continuously found everywhere around the world. The only reason this is of note is because this was a large study.
Well, I understand them finding new species in remote jungles. But streams and rivers in well traveled, heavily colonized Europe?
'' 57 New Freshwater Fish Species Found in Europe Europe's rivers and lakes boast at least 57 more freshwater fish species than previously thought, scientists have announced.'' If anything, scientists should be embarrassed and ashamed this escaped their knowledge for so long...
No, hybrids of two species are called hybrids, not new species. The sixty-pound "coyotes" that are moving into the Northeast after spending several generations crossbreeding with the wolf population in Canada are technically identified as Canis latrans x lupus. Hybridization of species is very rare in the wild because they generally don't perform their courtship rituals in the same way and so don't attract each other's instinct. It happens most often when one population is distressed and mates are difficult to find, such as the wolf in North America. Lonely (and large and inedible) dogs have also been known to mate with the more athletic coyotes who jump in and out of their fenced yards. Occasionally two closely related species that have been separated by geography are reintroduced to each other by human intervention and find each other's courtship rituals recognizable. The rose-breasted grosbeak of the Eastern USA and the black-headed grosbeak of the West were separated by the dense forest down the center of the continent. After we cut it down and replaced it with farmland, the two species met as they descended on the bountiful fruit in the orchards we planted, and began interbreeding prodigiously. We've spotted hybrid grosbeaks at our feeders 2,000 miles away in California.
How long til the tiger muskie is considered its own species and not a hybrid? How many years down the evolutionary tree?
I don't know that we've got an answer to that question. Linnaean taxonomy hasn't been around that long and not very many hybrids have arisen during that time in nature. Cultivated hybrid plants and domesticated hybrid animals are still identified by Genus species1 x species2. I looked up the zebrass but apparently zebras and asses only mate in captivity. I'm fairly certain that macaws actually are hybridizing "in the wild," but it's a stretch to call it that when their "territories" only overlap at the trash bins outside the fast food joints in Brazil. There have been documented cases of conures hybridizing in the wild, but again it's due to the impact of humans on their territoriality. Unlike macaws--highly brash and gregarious birds who for all we can tell will happily engage in inter-species dating until they're all a uniform shade of violet--hybrid conures only date other hybrids that look like themselves. This could mean that eventually there will be a population with a stable and identifable gene pool, distinct from the parent species. Or it could mean they'll die out from the inability to find each other. The bottom line, at least AFAIK, is that so far no hybrid population of animals has become well enough established to force zoologists to decide what to do about it.
