Geneseo professor publishes article identifying new species of snailfish
On Oct. 1, SUNY Geneseo Assistant Professor of Biology Mackenzie Gerringer co-authored an article in Marine Biodiversity, a peer-reviewed biological journal devoted to publications and research on marine ecosystems and the diversity of plant and animal life found there. The paper, “Independent radiation of snailfishes into the hadal zone confirmed by Paraliparis selti sp. nov. from the Atacama Trench, SE Pacific,” identified a new species of deep sea snailfish, Paraliparis selti.
Snailfish are an incredibly diverse family of fish, ranging from the Arctic to Antarctic Oceans and living in depths from shallow surface waters to depths of over eight thousand meters. According to the article, over 400 species of snailfish live in every ocean on the planet, with the possibility of many unidentified unique species.
Snailfish range and diversity in the hadal zone, the underwater ecosystem over six thousand meters below sea level, is still largely unknown due to the rarity of concrete data and evidence. The research done by Gerringer and the team of researchers she worked with is helping to uncover the true diversity of snailfishes in South America and other regions.
Gerringer’s role in the research included confirming that the specimens located were truly a new species of snailfish by examining physical and molecular features of the fish.
“To tell if something is a different species, we’ve looked at the morphology: the shapes. For fish that includes how many vertebrae they have, how many fin rays they have, and how many pores they have to sense on their face. But that information can only tell us so much,” she said. “So, it’s also important to use genetic evidence. We sequence what are called barcode genes, and we look at three specific genes that are found across all fishes. Everybody has them, and they change, but they don’t change too quickly. So by looking at small changes in those genetic sequences, we can build a tree and trace back the relationships of how those groups have evolved over evolutionary time.”
Gerringer said that her trip to the Atacama Trench off the coast of Chile and Peru, South America took approximately one month, and included researchers from many different countries. According to the article, they spent one month documenting snailfish diversity using cameras and traps to determine the diversity of snailfish in the area.
She said, “We sailed in 2018. We were out at sea for about 30 days exploring the trench and then I have been working on describing and writing the paper for the remaining three or four years. So, we're excited to share this paper. It was a big international effort. We were on the ship working to study the Atacama Trench, which is off the coast of Peru and Chile in South America, and we actually had scientists from 17 different countries working together.”
Gerringer emphasized the importance of international cooperation in her recent work; by collaborating with scientists and researchers from many different countries, the team was able to gain insight and expertise on all the subjects needed to identify a novel, or new, species.
“It takes a lot of people to study deep sea ecosystems and a lot of different expertise across many fields,” she said. “We couldn’t do it without that level of collaboration.”
Gerringer said that she hopes her research can help push back on the perception that deep sea ecosystems are otherworldly or disconnected from the rest of the planet.
“Sometimes we have this desire to call the deep sea alien or otherworldly,” she said. “But these habitats are really closely connected with the rest of the ocean, and we’re seeing that [humans are] already impacting the sea habitats. So, we like to try to avoid using terms like that because it can make it feel like the deep sea is out of sight and out of mind or somewhere else, but we’re already seeing things like trash and the effects of climate change on deep sea ecosystems. So we’re trying to push back on that narrative a little bit.”
