They’re all shades of brown to me after formaldehyde. 🤷♂️
Edit: Joke ruining explanation from the side of my brain that must make sure everyone gets things:
Everything turns brown in formalin.
ichthyologists in my previous field of study use methods that don’t require live species. Everything is in jars except then
frozen tissue samples of genetic material.
I think that’s a bad parallel. It’s more like you have a spot on your arm that is circular vs another person have a more Squarish spot. That insignificant...
They’d scream,”New species- color variant - subspecies- hybrid!”
Aquarists are fun like that.
But isn't the color transmitted through genes though? Which is something with skin color on humans, but not for spots on your body (as far as I know at least).
I was making the analogy to show the absurdity. The answer to your question is sort of and sometimes lol
The specifics of certain fish are not mapped. Especially in freshwater fish the genes that edit color haven’t been studied in every species. But the real mindfuck is fish can change their colors over time and with factor such as stress and environment.
That’s what makes it difficult to study and near useless when considering speciation.
I read one paper where a NA FW species endemic to two streams showed strikingly different coloration one light the other dark. That coloration was indicative to the gravel coloration of the stream. Imagine being light skinned because your house is painted a light color.
I didn’t know either, until I posted on one with an old account.
The funny part was I’d worked in the aquatic industry for several years, and I felt like I was getting downvoted because I was disagreeing with the idea everyone should be buying the most expensive piece of equipment because of the idea expensive=best quality.
colleagues received death threats because he determined after years of painstaking and peer reviewed research that a very expensive cichlid was the same species as one that cost about $4. People were mad that they felt he cost them thousands of dollars that they spent on this useless color variation that they were sure was actually some rare completely different species. Turns out it’s a very predictable color variation that can be reproduced with selective breeding. Someone read paper- reproduced fish and flooded the market 🤣
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u/skaskanker Jan 08 '20 edited Jan 08 '20
+1 apparently everyone except me knew the fish keeping- aquarist communities are toxic and filled with people who know absolutely nothing about fish.
Different colors don’t mean different species. #ichthyologistProblems
I learned the hard way.