MANGALURU: A group of international scientists from India, Germany, United Kingdom and Switzerland have described a new family of bony fishes
from the Western Ghats, and named it Aenigmachannidae.
A year after the discovery of the enigmatic Gollum Snakehead, Aenigmachanna gollum from the rice fields of northern Kerala, scientists have now carried out detailed studies on its skeleton and genetic assembly, that revealed that this species, and its congener Aenigmachanna mahabali, represents a new family different from Channidae, in which both species were initially placed.
The research team comprised scientists from the Senckenberg Natural History Collections in Dresden (Germany), the Natural History Museum in London (UK), Natural History Museum in Berne (Switzerland), Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) - Pune, Nirmalagiri College in Kannur, and the Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies
Research and close observation of the high-resolution images suggested that members of Aenigmachannidae are living fossils and comprise an ancient Gondwanan lineage that survived the break-up of the supercontinent and the northward drift of the Indian subcontinent, about 100 million years ago.
“The recognition of Aenigmachannidae as a new family of bony fishes comes six years after the description of Kryptoglanidae, another unique family of freshwater fish endemic to Kerala. The presence of two unique endemic families of freshwater fishes in Kerala is unparalleled, and indicates the exceptional diversity and endemicity of fishes in this part of the world” said Rajeev Raghavan, Assistant Professor, Kerala University of Fisheries and Ocean Studies, who was part of the study.
The gollum snakehead, Aenigmachanna gollum and the mahabali snakehead, Aenigmachanna mahabali are known to occur in the aquifers and subterranean channels connected to paddy fields and dug-out wells in Malappuram and Pathanamthitta districts of Kerala. While Aenigmachanna gollum was discovered by pure chance in a rice field not long after the devastating floods that raged in Kerala in August 2018, Aenigmachanna mahabali was discovered opportunistically from a dug-out well.
“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” said Neelesh Dahanukar, research scientist, IISER, Pune, who co-authored the paper.
"Throughout my career I have worked on many strange fishes, but the Gollum Snakehead is easily the weirdest of them all. If I had been asked whether such a fish existed in the Western Ghats or anywhere in the world, I would have said, no way. Yet here it is" remarked Ralf Britz, based at the Senckenberg Museum at Dresden, Germany, who led this paper.
Results of this study was published in ‘Scientific Reports’, the open-access mega-journal of the Nature Publishing Group on Wednesday.