Whilst climbing through a cave system on the western gradient of Tena , Ecuador , the last thing you might look to find when looking up is a catfish . But that ’s precisely what happened when an external inquiry squad was making a plant and fauna inventory of a cave located in the Napo District .
The group of cavers determine the fish climbing up a close upright flowstone waterfall , with some mortal reach heights of up to three meters ( 10 feet ) . Whilst it ’s not too unusual for some catfish to make forays out of the water and up bouldered rapids , this is the first time it has been documented in this species , and the first time it ’s been consider materialize in a cave for the armored wolf fish mob to which it belong .
The research worker were able-bodied to describe the Pisces the Fishes asChaetostoma microps , a species that commonly lives in the upper reaches of the Amazon and isendemicto Ecuador and Peru . The species is normally known to run through alga , so the reason for why it was found experience in the caves has lead to some speculation . The authors ofthe report , published in the journalSubterranean Biology , suggest that they might plainly be passing through the cave system , or could possibly be graze on microbic films found in the cave current .
The fish usually uses its sucker - regulate mouth to attach to things such as rock ‘n’ roll and trees in fast - flowing section of rivers , though relative ofC. micropsare known to climb over rapids , specially when spawning . Studieshave been done on other appendage of the armored wolffish kin , Loricariidae , which have attest that the fish are able to at the same time breath and scrape off algae whilst clinging to surface with their mouths , which seem like they ’re made of sandpaper .
The ability to climb up , therefore , was not too much of a surprise to the cavers . To them , the fact that the species had previously only been reported from current above ground , and that instead they notice the creature deeply within a cave system , was the most interesting . Whatever the reason for why the fish has decided to lay up shop in a cave , one of the researchers who found the fish , Geoff Hoese , toldthe BBCthat he thinks there might be some strong-arm divergence between the specimen escort in the cave and the ones that commonly exist above ground .
" There is n’t enough data point at this point to do more than speculate , but it ’s skillful to intend that we may be observe a little but pregnant evolutionary footstep as a species moves from one niche to another , ” Hoese toldBBC Earth .
