'Surprise' discovery of Europe's first cave-dwelling fish - BBC News

Is that the best the BBC can do?

I thought it was a reasonable report, and it does give a link to the original article.

I've seen trout and bullhead in caves but not stone loach, though stone loach are very common in the surface streams of the Ribble at least. It's interesting that they suggest the cave loach has evolved without being completely isolated from surface populations.

I bet it was a surprise to the blind(ish) white trout of LL, LNRC, Ogof y Ci etc, etc.

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Would be interesting to breed it on the surface.  Would it regain it's eye sight and pigmentation?

Mexican Blind Cave Fish are captive bred nowadays, and are still pink.

Graigwen said:

I bet it was a surprise to the blind(ish) white trout of LL, LNRC, Ogof y Ci etc, etc.

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I don't believe that the white trout found in Britain are a separate species to those found on the surface and it seems probable these loach are. I wonder why the didn't expect them to be found this far north. Something to do with temperature and food supply in the water perhaps?

I am absolutely certain I saw a fish identical to that in a cave in North Wales on the evening of Thursday 23rd March.

I was at the head of a group of 4 people and on "hands and knees" in a low spot. The floor under the water was silted and the fish was sat there.

I stopped and alerted everyone to it.

It was around 4-5 inches in length and (knowing almost nothing about fish) I described it as a colourless catfish (it may or may not have had a pink tinge)

It was not concerned with the presence of my hand next to it.

Sadly, as the others moved in the confined space, the silted floor was disturbed and the fish was lost to sight.

Perhaps they are not as rare as thought?



Ian

meanderthal said:

I wonder why the didn't expect them to be found this far north.

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I think it's just because there are very few if any other true cave fish that far north, and this is the first known from Europe. There's a great interview with Graham Proudlove on youtube where he mentions that our closest true cave fish were in Iraq, but that was before this species was discovered.

meanderthal said:

Graigwen said:

I bet it was a surprise to the blind(ish) white trout of LL, LNRC, Ogof y Ci etc, etc.

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Click to expand...

I don't believe that the white trout found in Britain are a separate species to those found on the surface and it seems probable these loach are. I wonder why the didn't expect them to be found this far north. Something to do with temperature and food supply in the water perhaps?

Click to expand...

Perhaps we need to consider what we mean by "cave fish" - do we mean stygophiles,stygoxenes or stygobites?

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Stygobites. Cave-adapted fish with evolutionarily adapted traits as opposed to surface fish which can acclimatise to caves if they happen to find themselves there.