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

A study published in the 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. The pictures of this new hybrid fish species started circling around social media and peeked the attention of almost everyone who saw it. It wasn’t long before the internet had a nickname for this new fish species. It was called the Sturddlefish.

Source:@i_am_abhi_s (Twitter)

Read | Largest Flying Animal In History, C Boreas, Identified: Study

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

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

Source:@Johni_Tech (Twitter)

Read |  Newly-discovered Lake In Nepal Likely To Become World's Highest

New Fish Species: How did this happen?

According to the reports the scientific journal Genes, the story of this new fish species began in 2019, a group of researchers were trying to induce Gynogenesis which is a form of asexual reproduction. Gynogenesis requires a sperm, but not the actual contribution of their DNA, in Russian sturgeon. While researchers were pursuing a totally different goal from this experiment, something entirely unexpected happened.

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

Read | New Freshwater Fish Species Discovered In Kerala, Details Here

New Fish Species: What we know about the Sturddlefish?

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

Read | Research Has Revealed That 3 Species In India Have Become Extinct

Clearly, it’s not impossible any more. According to the reports of the scientific journal Genes, the 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, these fish species evolve very slowly. Hence, although millenniums seem a really long time in terms of human evolution, for fishes it's not that much.