Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 7h

Enjoy! The ferry out to Texel is great.

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 1d

I will note, there are actually two species of Periopthalmus mudskippers in this video. It's from this study: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

PNAS

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a peer reviewed journal of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) - an authoritative source of high-impact, original research that broadly spans...

www.pnas.org

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 1d

#FishADay Periophthalmus barbarus Atlantic Mudskipper. Coastal tropical Africa. Spend most of their time on land, subsequently developed some unique adaptations to do things terrestrial tetrapods take for granted, like blinking--pulls its eyes into its head.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=twho...

Mudskipper Blinking

YouTube video by Penn State University

www.youtube.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 2d

#FishADay Pylodictis olivaris Flathead Catfish. FW from Great Lakes to Mexico. Reaches 150+ cm; closest living relative is a blind cave fish that reaches ~13 cm. Recent study documented reshuffling of food webs where it has invaded the Susquehanna www.wired2fish.com/news/invader...

Invader Alert: The New King of the Susquehanna

Invasive flathead catfish have taken over as the top predator on the Susquehanna River, leading to changes in the river’s ecosystem.

www.wired2fish.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 6d

#FishADay Satanoperca leucosticta Whitespot Eartheater. FW Guiana shield. "Eartheater" because they grab mouthfuls of substrate and sift out tasty morsels. Mouth-brooded by females, sometimes from the egg stage, sometimes from the larval stage. youtu.be/vJE1wwwTGwQ

satanoperca leucosticta mouth brooding 26.07.010 - 3

YouTube video by Matt Pritchard

youtu.be

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 7d

And yet, they are very cute.
youtube.com/shorts/aZwr-...

Monopterus albus #shorts

YouTube video by Oliver Knott

youtube.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 7d

#FishADay Monopterus albus Asian Swamp Eel. Widespread FW E and SE Asia. Adults & juveniles obligate air-breathers; earlier life stages absorb oxygen through skin. Makes control in introduced range hard--typical fish poisons are absorbed through gills. eu.naplesnews.com/story/news/2...

Move over iguanas. There's a new invasive species moving into Florida, the Asian swamp eel

The Asian swamp eel is an air-breathing fish that can move across land to new locations. Florida offers ideal habitat.

eu.naplesnews.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 9d

Life's better with waffles, though.

a stack of waffles on a plate with syrup being poured on top

ALT: a stack of waffles on a plate with syrup being poured on top

media.tenor.com

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 9d

Here's the plot function. If you don't have waffle installed, only the histogram plot will be made (and you'll get a warning that the waffle-based plots were skipped).

docs.ropensci.org/occCite/refe...

Plotting summary figures for occCite search results — plot.occCiteData

Generates up to three different kinds of plots, with toggles determining whether plots should be done for individual species or aggregating all species–histogram by year of occurrence records, waffle:...

docs.ropensci.org

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 9d

New update to #occCite #Rstats package--we're up to v0.6.1. A dependency used for plotting has been archived on CRAN, but is still available via another repository. This makes it possible to plot occCite summary figures without exploding if waffle is unavailable.

cran.r-project.org/package=occC...

occCite: Querying and Managing Large Biodiversity Occurrence Datasets

Facilitates the gathering of biodiversity occurrence data from disparate sources. Metadata is managed throughout the process to facilitate reporting and enhanced ability to repeat analyses.

cran.r-project.org

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 26d

#FishADay Listrura elongata. Freshly described from Rio Camboriú basin in Atlantic Forest in Brazil. Very elongate burrower missing dorsal and pectoral fins (they'd just get in the way anyway). Two other species in the genus have indepenedently lost fins. www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-...

Long, slender fish — missing its fins — discovered in Brazil. It’s a new species

The new species has been found in two small isolated waterways in Brazil’s Atlantic Forest, according to a study.

www.miamiherald.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 27d

#FishADay Lota lota Burbot. Circumpolar; the only freshwater gadiform. 16th century accounts in the UK say they were so common they were used as pig food; they have not been seen in the UK since the 1960s. youtu.be/FRxxB_INZQk?...

Finding Britain's Lost Fish (BURBOT)

YouTube video by CHASING SCALES

youtu.be

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 28d

#FishADay Orectolobus maculatus Spotted Wobbegong. South coast of Australia. Coloration and fleshy lappets help it blend in with bottom to catch prey unawares, hence its other names--carpet shark and tassel shark. www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1lQ...

Spotted Wobbegong - Orectolobus maculatus

YouTube video by Strangefish

www.youtube.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 29d

Also it is very cute.

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · 29d

#FishADay Careproctus colliculi Bumpy Snailfish. Newly described species from Monterey Canyon off California. Single specimen (collected via suction sampler by ROV Doc Ricketts in 3268 m of water) is distinct from congeners based on (name gave it away) fleshy bumps on its head.

youtu.be/hwsl-ebVVoU

MBARI's advanced underwater robot reveals a new species of deep-sea snailfish

YouTube video by MBARI (Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute)

youtu.be

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 8

#FishADay Troglichthys rosae Ozark Cavefish. Native to around 15 caves on Ozark Plateau in SE US. No optic nerve and only rudimentary eyes; instead uses sensory papillae to detect prey.
Recent study found they began adapting to cave life ~ 2-11 million years ago.
news.yale.edu/2025/08/27/d...

Dark ages: Genomic analysis shows how cavefish lost their eyes

In a new study, Yale researchers used genomic analysis to show when cavefishes lost their eyes, which provides a method for dating cave systems.

news.yale.edu

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 5

Now that #FishADay has covered all six candidates for Denmark's National Fish, vote here! (and if you care to, comment with your choice!)

nationalfisk.dk/hvilke-fisk-...

Hvilke fisk kan der stemmes på?

Juryen har udvalgt hvilke fisk der kan stemmes på.

nationalfisk.dk

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 5

As with other candidates for Denmark's national fish, they are heavily fished and some stocks are in bad shape. It's important to check your herring for a Marine Stewardship Coucil certification.

www.msc.org/what-you-can...

Atlantic Herring - SeaChoice

www.seachoice.org

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 5

Not just a Christmas lunch staple, Denmark's final candidate for national fish is of a historical heavy-hitter. There are herring bones at archeological sites dating back 7kybp and the Baltic herring fishery was one of Denmark's first major income sources in the Middle Ages.

youtu.be/rG4qxlp4xXE

Smoking Herring in Denmark, 1950s - Archive Film 1067159

YouTube video by HuntleyFilmArchives

youtu.be

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 5

#FishADay Clupea harengus Atlantic Herring. North Atlantic benthopelagic. School in huge numbers; communicate by releasing air from swim bladder through anus. Yeah, yeah fine. Farting. Strange sounds in the Cold War Baltic were feared to be submarines, but...yeah. www.iflscience.com/for-15-years...

For 15 Years Sweden Thought Enemy Submarines Were Invading Its Territory. It Turned Out To Be Herring Farts

www.iflscience.com

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 3

See also this idiosyncratic paper by yours truly on the relationship between science and policy for eastern US fisheries. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1...

Closing the Gap Between Researchers and Policymakers: Lessons from the History of Fisheries Management in the United States

Increases in sea surface temperature have led to distributional changes in many commercially exploited fish species. These changes have already led to conflict over mackerel fisheries, arising from...

www.tandfonline.com

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 3

Denmark's fifth candidate for national fish, cod has been fished by humans for thousands of years. NW Atlantic fishery collapsed spectacularly in the 1990s; NE still produces a spectacular amount of codfish, but there is a long history of conflict over management. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cod_Wars

Cod Wars - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 3

#FishADay Gadus morhua, Atlantic Cod. North Atlantic benthopelagic. School during the day, disperse at night to feed. A 5kg female can produce 2.5 million eggs in a season; larvae drift in pelagic, then settle to the bottom as adults. youtu.be/x8FZ7u-yFbA?...

Cod in Vesterhage

YouTube video by Coastal Ecology

youtu.be

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Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 2

Here's the link: conferences.au.dk/tibs-aarhus-...

Abstracts submission and registration

conferences.au.dk

Hannah Owens @hannahoish.bsky.social · Sep 2

It isn't too late to submit an abstract for the @biogeography.bsky.social meeting in Aarhus in January! They just extended the deadline to 8 September. Hope to see you there!

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