John Sullivan discovers and describes a new genus. John is a research associate in the Cornell Museum of Vertebrates who has spent a lot of time in our lab over the years sequencing fish samples, and even more time in the field in many parts of Africa surveying freshwater fish diversity. His description this week of his newly discovered genus — Cryptomyrus — of weakly electric fish in the family Mormryidae is getting a lot of fun popular press attention. Click here for the original paper. Click here for a Cornell Chronicle article. Click here for coverage in Wired Magazine. Click here for an article on the Nature Conservancy website. Turns out that these not-particularly-charismatic-looking fish are highly genetically differentiated from any others that John and his collaborators have sampled in their very extensive research on this fascinating group that communicates via species-specific electric signals.
