New Fish Species: Scientists accidentally breed unrelated species, create 'Sturddlefish'?

A study published in open-access scientific journal Genes in May 2020 revealed that a team of Hungarian scientists have accidentally created a hybrid of American Paddlefish and Russian Sturgeon. pictures of this new hybrid fish species started circling around social media and peeked attention of almost everyone who saw it. It wasn’t long before internet had a nickname for this new fish species. It was called Sturddlefish.

Source:@i_am_abhi_s (Twitter)

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New Fish Species: American Paddlefish and Russian Sturgeon produce an offspring 

Russian sturgeon fish is one of highly valued fish species of world, as top-shelf caviars in most expensive restaurants come from this carnivorous species. Russian sturgeon is mor of this new fish species as it provided with eggs. American paddlefish, on or hand, is found in only 22 of United States and is a filter feeder, which depends on zooplankton in water.  American paddlefish posses a comically long sut, which has tens of thousands of sensory receptors. Surprisingly, American paddlefish seems to have passed on this feature to its inbred, and mixed offspring Sturddlefish.

Source:@Johni_Tech (Twitter)

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New Fish Species: How did this happen?

According to reports scientific journal Genes, story of this new fish species began in 2019, a group of researchers were trying to induce Gygenesis which is a form of asexual reproduction. Gygenesis requires a sperm, but t actual contribution of ir DNA, in Russian sturgeon. While researchers were pursuing a totally different goal from this experiment, something entirely unexpected happened.

American paddlefish successfully began fertilizing sturgeon eggs. According to science journal Genes,  researchers later claimed that y never intended to play around with hybridization. It was absolutely unintentional. As a result of this accidental fertilisation, hundreds of hybrids emerged from eggs. Only a month later, more than two-thirds of m were still alive. And fast forward a few more months 100 of se hybrid Sturddlefish are still alive.

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New Fish Species: What we kw about Sturddlefish?

Amidst all this what is most astounding is that, for American Paddlefish and Russian sturgeon, ir last common ancestor swam during of disaurs. So since n, for over 184 million years two have been evolving independently, on opposite sides of planet. This is supposed to make it nearly impossible for m to produce a new fish species. 

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Clearly, it’s t impossible any more. According to reports of  scientific journal Genes, American Paddlefish and Russian sturgeon twice as evolutionarily diverged as humans and mice. It incomprehensible and highly unlikely that two species could have so much in common in spite of spending millenniums evolving independently. But, se fish species evolve very slowly. Hence, although millenniums seem a really long time in terms of human evolution, for fishes it's t that much.