Scientists Link Unusual Fish Larva to New Sea Bass Species

Posted on May 13, 2014

It can be difficult for scientists to identify larval stages of marine fishes because they often bear little or no resemblance to what they will look like as adults. An excellent example of this is the larva (pictured above) of a new species of sea bass discovered off the coast of Curaco by Smithsonian scientists. The adult sea bass is pictured below.

The larva came to the team's attention from a photograph without identification in another research paper. The scientists recognized it as a member of the sea bass family Serranidae, but they were intrigued by its seven very elongate dorsal-fin spines.

David Johnson, a zoologist at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, says in the announcement, "This feature isn't known in any Atlantic sea bass larvae, but it is similar to one species of Indo-Pacific sea bass. We initially thought the larva must have been caught in the Indo-Pacific Ocean, but we were wrong."

The team obtained the preserved larval fish for further study and found the DNA sequence from the specimen did not match any known fish species. Meanwhile, in a separate project, Smithsonian scientists were using a manned submersible to explore the deep-reef fish species off of Curacao in the southern Caribbean. Among the fish collected were "golden basses," which the team initially identified as Liopropoma aberrans based on general color pattern. However, genetic analyses revealed more than one species. Combining this new genetic information with available DNA barcoding data for all western Atlantic sea bass specimens revealed that the larva from the Florida Straits is the pelagic stage of a cryptic new species of Liopropoma from southern Caribbean deep reefs. The mystery was solved and the larva was matched to the adult.

The new species of sea bass is named Liopropoma olneyi. The team named the new species in honor of a deceased colleague, John E. Olney, who studied and taught courses about marine fish larvae.

Carole Baldwin, a zoologist at Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, says, "This was one of those cases where all the stars were properly aligned. We discover a new species of sea bass on Curacao deep reefs that just happens to be the missing adult stage of a larval fish from Florida, which we only knew existed because it was included as 'decoration' in a scientific publication. What a great little fish story!"

A research paper on the newly discovered sea bass species is published here in PLoS One.

OCEANS