THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Miss Kerala, the fish from the state that found a place in the IUCN Red list, might soon get a companion in Malabar Snakehead, which has been found to be critically endangered. If it was commercial over-exploitation that caused a near extinction of Miss Kerala, in the case of Malabar Snakehead, a mistaken identity is partly to blame.It was nearly 150 years ago that a veterinary surgeon and naturalist Francis Day noticed that the colour pattern of a young Malabar snakehead matched with that of the Giant Snakehead (Channa micropeltes) and thought the two were the same. While Francis Day thought the two fish species were the same, the local fishermen were a confused lot. This was because the Malabar snakehead, now scientifically called Channa diplogramma, comes in different colours and forms at different stages of its life.Right from an ‘orangish’ to golden yellow shades in the fingerling stage, a sea-blue and lilac juvenile phase to a deep brown and finally black and white adult, the fish in the various stages bears no resemblance to each other. The fishermen, quite naturally thought that they were all different fishes and called them by different names such as pulivaha, karivaha, manalvaha and charalvaha.A team of Indian and international fish taxonomists have now unravelled the puzzle in the June 2011 issue of the journal PloS ONE, the PloS standing for Public Library of Sciences.Studying the external features as well as genetics of the two species, they found that the one found to a limited region in Kerala to be Channa diplogramma and not Channa micropeltes as it was thought to be. To make a comparison, they even brought in specimens from Tasik Kenyar Lake in Terengganu in Malaysia.The scientific team of Allen Benziger, Siby Philip, Rajeev Raghavan, P. Hamsa Anvar Ali, Mithun Sukumaran, Josin C Tharian, Neelesh Dahanukar, Fibin Baby, Reynold Peter, K. Remadevi, K. Radhakrishnan, Mohamed AbdulKather Haniffa, Ralf Britz, Agostinho Antunes found that this fish is not Channa micropeltes as was thought earlier but a different species Channa diplogramma, which is critically endangered. They found that the Malabar Snakehead, used both as ornamental fish as well as food fish, has a very narrow distribution. It is seen only in certain parts of the rivers originating from the Western Ghats, including the Meenachil, Manimala, Pampa, Achenkovil and Kallada in Kerala as well as Chittar and Tamiraparani rivers in Tamil Nadu. ‘’Besides, this fish population has a fairly low reproductive rate, the offsprings are few and they mature very slowly. This makes them a highly vulnerable group,’’ said Josin Tharian, faculty member of St John’s College, Anchal, who was part of the team. The good news is that the scientific team which solved the puzzle is also the assessment team for fishes for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it would only be a matter of time before the fish gets the necessary attention and protection measures.
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