Signalscope electric fish6/22/2023 ![]() No sense in letting the sharks have all the fun, after all. So here’s to hoping this newfound pair of weakly electric fish species can get by alright. Having a fish or beetle or sea cucumber at the ready can be pivotal for scientists trying to make sense of the tree of life-an altogether more pressing matter in the age of mass extinction. Specimens don’t just soak in jars for decades, never to see fresh air again. It’s a serendipitous reminder of just how important natural history collections are to biology. Those two earlier specimens turned out to be a new species that's closely related to ogoouensis: Cryptomyrus ona, the only other species in the brand new genus. “Catching the one specimen of Cryptomyrus ogoouensis in 2014 rekindled our interest, and we became resigned to the fact that we weren’t getting any more specimens to work on anytime soon,” Sullivan says. He’d held off on describing them, though, because describing a new species from one or even two specimens isn’t ideal. Sullivan’s colleagues had earlier sent him two specimens of an undescribed mormyrid, one in 2001 and another in 2012, both from Gabon. Ogoouensis isn’t alone in the Cryptomyrus genus, though: Science had another species in its grasp all along. (Humans can feel it, but you’d only be able to pick up a slight tingle by grabbing the largest mormyrids by the tail.) Each of those cells works with minute blasts of electricity, but when they all fire at the same time, they create a noticeable electric field. A mormyrid creates those pulses with a mass of modified muscle cells at the base of its tail. Each species of weakly electric fish is hardwired to produce a certain waveform-that is, the shape of the pulse seen through an oscilloscope, which shows voltage over time. It turns out that Cryptomyrus ogoouensis' electrical pulses are as singular as its giant chin. And now they can invite a new fish into the family. But they generate electric fields to detect prey in the dark, and also use pulses of electricity to communicate with each other. Also known as mormyrids, these don't have the shock power of the electric eel. In a study released yesterday, Sullivan describes what is not only a new species, Cryptomyrus (meaning “hidden fish”) ogoouensis (named after the river whence it came), but a member of a mysterious new genus in the family of so-called weakly electric fishes. Pet fish for sale brisbane, Realflow demo project, Amlogic s802 xbmc. “And this one I was like, ‘What is that?’” Katrina kaif movies list online, Signalscope 2, Irandokht magazine, Disney on ice. “I know these fish well enough that I can see them just for a second when I pull them from my trap and I know what they are,” Sullivan says. ![]() At only about four and a half inches long, this particular electric fish was brown, almost golden, with a chin like Jay Leno. But when he pulled his trap out of Gabon’s Ogooué River in September 2014 he knew right away he'd found a doozy. Ichthyologist John Sullivan has seen his fair share of electric fishes.
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