New Armored Catfish Found in Amazon

[splashhopper]

 

A new species of armored, wood-eating catfish (pictured underwater) found in the Amazon rain forest feeds on a fallen tree in the Santa Ana River in Peru in 2006.

 

Other so-called suckermouth armored catfish species use their unique teeth to scrape organic material from the surfaces of submerged wood. But the new, as yet unnamed, species is among the dozen or so catfish species known to actually ingest wood.

 

Still, wood-eating catfish are largely unable to digest wood. Only associated organic material—such as algae, microscopic plants, animals, and other debris—gets absorbed into their bodies. The wood itself passes through the fish and is expelled as waste.

 

"The fish pass wood through their guts in less than four hours, which is incredibly fast for an animal that supposedly digests wood," said Donovan German, a biologist at the University of California, Irvine, who is researching the digestion of wood-eating catfish.

 

"People think they must have an amazing consortium of microbes in their guts to help the fish digest wood, but that isn't really what I've found," he added. "The amazing microbes are in the river, on the wood itself." National Geographic photo by Michael Goulding/Copeia

[Mike Pike]

Ya, looks like a Pleco. I've kept several in an aquarium and you should always have a piece of driftwood in the tank cuz they use if for roughage.

[MJL]

Very cool. In South America, the locals eat them and you can see various species of large specimens at the local fish markets (some as big as 1.5-2ft long) – Apparently they’re rich in iron. Various species of wood eating catfish (panaque) have been in the aquarium trade for years. The Royal pleco is probably the most common one found at pet shops and up until the mid to late 90’s, the blue eyed pleco was fairly common as well. I owned a royal pleco for about 9yrs and he made short work of the driftwood in my tank (cleaning up after it was insane!) – He also ate cucumbers, lettuce, algae wafers, frozen shrimp and blood worms. I named him Jaws.LOL