กระทู้เก่า - 05472 : 

 

Scientists have discovered the world's smallest fish on record in an
acidic peat swamp in Indonesia, with a see-through body and a head that
is
unprotected by a skeleton, researchers said Wednesday.

  Mature females of the Paedocypris progenetica, a member of the carp
family, only grow to 7.9 millimeters (0.31 inches) and the males have
enlarged pelvic fins and exceptionally large muscles that may be used
to
grasp the females during copulation, researchers wrote in the
Proceedings
of the Royal Society, published Wednesday by the Royal Society in
London.

  "This is one of the strangest fish that I've seen in my whole
career,'
said Ralf Britz, zoologist at the Natural History Museum in London, who
helped analyze the fish's skeleton. "It's tiny, it lives in acid and it
has these bizarre grasping fins. I hope we'll have time to find out
more
about them before their habitat disappears completely."

  The previous record for small size, according to the Natural History
Museum in London, was held by an 8-millimeter species of Indo-Pacific
goby.

  The new fish was discovered on Sumatra island by fish experts
Maurice
Kottelat from Switzerland and Tan Heok Hui from the Raffles Museum of
Biodiversity Research in Singapore. They were working with colleagues
from
Indonesia and with Kai-Erik Witte from the Max Planck Institute in
Germany.

  "You don't wake up in the morning and think today we will find the
smallest fish in the world," Kottelat told The Associated Press in a
telephone interview from his home in Switzerland.

  He said the record of finding the world's smallest fish was not
important,
preferring to focus on what he said was "scientifically significant."

  "What's important is finding a complete vertebrae in a body so
small," he
said.

  Kottelat said he first came across the fish in 1996, but originally
misidentified it as a member of an already existing species. "But then
we
realized this one was different."

  According to the researchers, the fish live in dark, tea-colored
water
with an acidity of ph 3, at least 100 times more acidic than rainwater.
Swamps like this were once thought to harbor very few animals, but
recent
research has revealed that they are highly diverse and home to many
species that occur nowhere else.

  Peat swamps are under threat in Indonesia from fires lit by
plantation
owners and farmers as well as unchecked development and farming.
Several
populations of Paedocypris have already been lost, researchers say,
according to the Natural History Museum.

  ___

  Associated Press writer Bradley S. Klapper in Geneva contributed to
this
report.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright 2006 AP

  [ 26/1/2549 3:36:38 ]

 ความคิดเห็นที่: 1

http://www.manager.co.th/Science/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000011001

crimson parasol [26/1/2549 7:48:4]

 ความคิดเห็นที่: 2

http://www.manager.co.th/Science/ViewNews.aspx?NewsID=9490000011001

crimson parasol [26/1/2549 7:48:34]