New eel species discovered
The Hindu
Specimen collected from Kalamukku fishing harbour near Kochi
Scientists from ICAR-National Bureau of Fish Genetic Resources, working on India's fish genetic resources for intellectual property protection and sustainable utilisation, have discovered a new species of eel from among specimen collected from the Kalamukku fishing harbour near Kochi city.
The newly discovered eel belongs to the congrid eels group and has been named Ariosoma Maurostigma (Two-spot short tail conger). The species name was derived from two Greek words - ‘mauro’, which means dark, and ‘stigma’, which means mark, referring to the black dark mark on the posterodorsal margin of the eyes.
The NBFGR confirmed this as a new species after a thorough taxonomic and molecular analysis and the findings have appeared in the international journal, Fish Biology. The Fish Biology paper, ‘A new species of the congrid eel genus Ariosoma (Anguilliformes:Congridae) from the south-west coast of India’, has been published by Kuldeep Kumar Lal, Thipramalai Thangappan Pillai Ajith Kumar, Paramasivam Kodeeswaran, Anil Mohapatra and Arulraj Dhinakaran.