索科特拉(Socotra)是西印度洋的一个遥不可及的岛屿,难以置信地到达,甚至更难在水下学习。然而,几年前,包括加利福尼亚科学学院的一组研究人员,流氓策展人和MacNA 2014 Keynote演讲者路易斯·罗沙(Luiz Rocha)前往也门这个外部领土,发现了从未见过的混合礁鱼的令人难以置信的多样性。
Socotra lies at the convergence of three very distinct biogeographic regions; the Indo-Polynesian province, the Western Indian Ocean Province, the western Arabian Sea Province, and last but not least, the one and only Red Sea. While Socotra itself may be only 82 miles long, it is the crossroads for different types of reef fish species who’s distribution ranges for thousands and thousands of miles.
这么多不同物种的名副其实的熔炉,其中一些是密切相关的,导致了几乎无与伦比的杂交程度,许多杂种在世界上没有其他文献记录。Socotra及其岛屿群岛的位置是杂交的热点,因为有许多鱼是红海和亚丁湾的区域特区,但在索科特拉的代表性有限。
Meanwhile Other reef fish from the Western Indian Ocean or the Indo-Polynesian province might be at the edge of their distribution at Socotra. The short version of why there are so many hybrids at Socotra is that there are often cases of one species being particularly rare, while a closely related species might be locally abundant.
No fewer than fourteen species of reef fish were documented as hybridizing at Socotra, spanning four different families including damselfish & clownfish, butterflyfish, surgeonfish, and hawkfishes. The butterflyfish hybrids are particularly diverse at Socotra, withChaetodon collareXC. Lunulacrossings,C. GardineriXC. leucopleura杂交种izing, and the gorgeousC. melapterus和C. Trifasciatus上图还融合了它们的基因。
在Socotra,也有Amphiprion bicinctus x A. omanensis和the hawkfishesCirritichthys calliurus x C. oxycephalus. But for us, the real main event of this discovery and this paper is the observations of incredible hybrids of the clown tang and the sohal tang,阿斯图鲁斯lineatus x A. sohal.
Sohal-Clown的Supperhonfish鱼类十字特别丰富,它们的颜色确实从lineatus supperonfish的满满,到满满的Sohal Tang,以及介于两者之间的所有内容。至少在索科特拉(Socotra),看来这两种外科医生物种中有一个稳定的,繁殖的人群,这是最引人注目的十字架之一阿斯图鲁斯found anywhere in the world.
The seven cases of reef fish hybrids found at Socotra is remarkable because they sampled such a tiny part of the marine environment of this little island, and they never even dove beyond 85 feet. Future expedition could easily, and most certainly, uncover more cases of reef fish hybridization but in the meantime we’ll just keep ogling that crazy sohal clown tang hybrid.
The full results of this hybridization hotspot can be found in the paper by Dibattista et. al can be found in the Journal of Biogeography, 2015.