Given the existence of Marine Le Pen, the existence of cave fish in Europe shouldn't have been such a great surprise but that came anyway when a hobbyist found cave fish in a cave so far North they just shouldn't be in it and that fact bears a number of similarities to Le Pen as well.
This photograph shows a male cave loach of 8.5 cm body length
Credit: Jasminca Behrmann-Godel
Feast your eyes on a European cave fish.
Ed: who the hell cares about Euro cave fish?
Sure he's just another boring cave fish with no color and poor sight but the mystery is how he got there. Cave fish won't do too well in a cave during an Ice Age so these fish can't have existed for too long and no-one really thought they existed at all.
"The cave fish was found surprisingly far in the north in Southern Germany," says Jasminca Behrmann-Godel of Germany's University of Konstanz. "This is spectacular as it was believed before that the Pleistocene glaciations had prevented fish from colonizing subterranean habitats so far north."
Their genetic studies of the fish together with knowledge on the geological history of the region suggest that the cave loach arose recently, within the last 20,000 years.
"It was only when the glaciers retreated that the system first became a suitable habitat for fish," says Arne Nolte from the University of Oldenburg/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön.
- SD
In evolutionary scale, twenty-thousand years is an eyeblink.
"No more than 30 divers have ever reached the place where the fish have been found," Kreiselmaier says. "Due to the usually bad visibility, strong current, cold temperature, and a labyrinth at the entrance, most divers do not come back again for diving."
But that didn't stop Kreiselmaier. In November 2015, on another dive, Kreiselmaier succeeded in catching a live specimen, which allowed the researchers to study its features in greater detail. The following year, he caught four more fish, enabling further study of the loach's form and genetics. Based on morphological and genetic comparison to surface fish caught upstream and downstream of the cave, the researchers report that the cave loaches are indeed an isolated population and the first known European cave fish.
- SD
I'm not a diver but I've read many times that cave diving is the most dangerous pursuit of the sport. Even that wasn't quite enough for Kreiselmaier since he was going to the most dangerous of the known-to-be dangerous places. That's crazy or cool or maybe a measure of both.
This photograph shows a male cave loach of 8.5 cm body length
Credit: Jasminca Behrmann-Godel
Feast your eyes on a European cave fish.
Ed: who the hell cares about Euro cave fish?
Sure he's just another boring cave fish with no color and poor sight but the mystery is how he got there. Cave fish won't do too well in a cave during an Ice Age so these fish can't have existed for too long and no-one really thought they existed at all.
"The cave fish was found surprisingly far in the north in Southern Germany," says Jasminca Behrmann-Godel of Germany's University of Konstanz. "This is spectacular as it was believed before that the Pleistocene glaciations had prevented fish from colonizing subterranean habitats so far north."
Their genetic studies of the fish together with knowledge on the geological history of the region suggest that the cave loach arose recently, within the last 20,000 years.
"It was only when the glaciers retreated that the system first became a suitable habitat for fish," says Arne Nolte from the University of Oldenburg/Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Plön.
- SD
In evolutionary scale, twenty-thousand years is an eyeblink.
"No more than 30 divers have ever reached the place where the fish have been found," Kreiselmaier says. "Due to the usually bad visibility, strong current, cold temperature, and a labyrinth at the entrance, most divers do not come back again for diving."
But that didn't stop Kreiselmaier. In November 2015, on another dive, Kreiselmaier succeeded in catching a live specimen, which allowed the researchers to study its features in greater detail. The following year, he caught four more fish, enabling further study of the loach's form and genetics. Based on morphological and genetic comparison to surface fish caught upstream and downstream of the cave, the researchers report that the cave loaches are indeed an isolated population and the first known European cave fish.
- SD
I'm not a diver but I've read many times that cave diving is the most dangerous pursuit of the sport. Even that wasn't quite enough for Kreiselmaier since he was going to the most dangerous of the known-to-be dangerous places. That's crazy or cool or maybe a measure of both.
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