New Family of Bony Fish Discovered : Daily Current Affairs

New Family of Bony Fish Discovered

Scientists from India, Germany, United Kingdom and Switzerland have discovered a new family of bony fish from the Western Ghats, and named it Aenigmachannidae.
Results of this study was published in Scientific Reports, the open-access mega-journal of the Nature Publishing Group.
A year after the discovery of the enigmatic Gollum Snakehead, Aenigmachanna gollum from the rice fields of northern Kerala, scientists have now conducted detailed studies on its skeleton and genetic assembly.
The study led to the recognition that this species, and its congener Aenigmachanna mahabali, represents a new family different from Channidae, in which both species were initially placed.

The Western Ghats, also known as Sahyadri (Benevolent Mountains), is a mountain range that covers an area of 140,000 square kilometers in a stretch of 1,600 kilometres parallel to the western coast of the Indian peninsula, traversing the states of Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is one of the eight hot-spots of biological diversity in the world. It is sometimes called the Great Escarpment of India. According to UNESCO, the Western Ghats are older than the Himalayas.
Total of thirty-nine areas in the Western Ghats, including national parks, wildlife sanctuaries and reserve forests, were designated as world heritage sites in 2012 – twenty in Kerala, ten in Karnataka, six in Tamil Nadu and four in Maharashtra.
The Western Ghats contain more than 30 per cent of all plant, fish, herpeto-fauna, bird, and mammal species found in India. Many species are endemic, such as the Nilgiri tahr (Hemitragus hylocrius) and the lion-tailed macaque (Macaca silenus). In fact, 50 per cent of India’s amphibians and 67 per cent of fish species are endemic to this region.
The region has a spectacular assemblage of large mammals - around 30 per cent of the world’s Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) population and 17 per cent of the world’s existing tigers (Panthera tigris) call this area their home.

The presence of two unique endemic families of freshwater fish in a small region like Kerala is unparalleled, and indicates the exceptional diversity and endemicity of fishes in this part of the world.
The aquifers of Kerala have a wealth of enigmatic and relic fauna, the diversity of which we are only slowly uncovering.
But subterranean ecosystems are under high levels of threat due to indiscriminate ground water extraction and pollution, and introduction of alien species in the dugout wells. As a result, we may be losing unique habitats and species much before they are known to science.