Friday, January 23, 2009

An armored, rock-climbing catfish

That's what has turned up in Venezuela, The new species, dubbed Lithogenes wahari, is taxonomically important as well as just plain weird. It uses its sucker-like mouth and a highly mobile pelvic fin to climb. It combines features found in two known families, the Loricariidae (armored catfishes) and Astroblepidae (climbing catfishes) and may come from a lineage ancestral to both.

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