• Question: You SAY you love finding out about animals, but have you found any new animals that most people haven't heard of? and if so, which ones?????

    Asked by elb12 to Sophie on 9 Mar 2013.
    • Photo: Sophie Holles

      Sophie Holles answered on 9 Mar 2013:


      On a research cruise in the Gambiers archepelago of French Polynesia (the cruise where I took the recordings of the reefs you can see in my pictures, the one taken from the mountain) we discovered a new species of fish! Its named after the research station I work at ‘criobe’. It was before I started my PhD, so I was just working as an assistant, but I helped Erwan (PhD student), Serge (director of the station) and Jeff (expert taxonomist) go fishing, take pictures of the fish we found and take a small fin clip for DNA analysis while we lived on the research boat for 19 days. Here is a link to an article about finding the fish: http://sciencythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/a-new-species-of-pufferfish-form-french.html The fish is called the striped toby, or Canthigaster criobe is its latin name!

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