Florida Keys being invaded by Lionfish

[Seamazter]

Good article

[sphelps]

There's lionfish all over the Caribbean, I saw hundreds in Cuba last year.




Apparently DNA testing of caught fish has shown that they all originated from the 6 to 8 lionfish kept in an aquarium in Florida, the aquarium was wiped out by a hurricane.

[Delphinus]

A public aquarium or a private one? How long ago was that? The reason I ask is they are pretty widespread, I guess their range extends as far north as the Carolina's ?? Or at least Georgia for sure. I'm curious if it's really all from 8 individuals how much time it took to fill in that span..

[sphelps]

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 smashed an aquarium and release the lions into Biscayne Bay. I'm not sure if it was public or private but I can only assume it was public if they are matching DNA. I'm sure how much truth is involved int this theory but it seems to be common story on the web these days.

[Funky_Fish14]

Yeah I too highly doubt it was just from those 8 fish...

I've also heard of sightings of them almost as far north as New York.

[justinl]

Anybody have a link or the title of the paper that spshelps is referring to? I'm just curious about the DNA tracking methods used... and frankly a little dubious. I'm no genetics guru myself, but I can't imagine any way to accomplish such a thing unless the 6-8 fish in question had had tissue samples taken from them and preserved (not likely unless they were originally experimental subjects). This would of course also require the samples to be available to the researchers (not impossible, assuming they were from a public aquarium), that the researchers were aware of the samples, and that the researchers had independent tissue samples of other fish to compare. Seems like too much of a miracle scenario to me.

edit: a quick literature search turns up not much. far as I can tell, the exact origin is still a mystery though the aquarium trade is getting most of the speculative blame.

[Funky_Fish14]

Originally Posted by justinl

Anybody have a link or the title of the paper that spshelps is referring to? I'm just curious about the DNA tracking methods used... and frankly a little dubious. I'm no genetics guru myself, but I can't imagine any way to accomplish such a thing unless the 6-8 fish in question had had tissue samples taken from them and preserved (not likely unless they were originally experimental subjects). This would of course also require the samples to be available to the researchers (not impossible, assuming they were from a public aquarium), that the researchers were aware of the samples, and that the researchers had independent tissue samples of other fish to compare. Seems like too much of a miracle scenario to me.

edit: a quick literature search turns up not much. far as I can tell, the exact origin is still a mystery though the aquarium trade is getting most of the speculative blame.

Totally agree with this.

[NuraNori]

I also cannot find the original papers, however that's mostly due to my library privileges being revoked since I'm no longer a student. However based on blurbs from those links that Sphelps posted I can certainly speculate Very bad of me as a scientist but whatever....

1. http://nas.er.usgs.gov/queries/FactS...?speciesID=963
Several fish were introduced into marine waters of Biscayne Bay, Florida, in 1992 as a result of Hurricane Andrew (Courtenay 1995).

A lot of this info or a reference to the info we're looking for would be in this paper by Courtenay.

2. http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/loc...8.story?page=3
About 40 lionfish have been captured in the Keys and sent frozen to NOAA's laboratory in Beaufort, N.C., where marine ecologist James Morris is studying many things about them.

So as you can see, lionfish from the Keys have been collected and sampled.

3. http://www.fishchannel.com/fish-news.../lionfish.aspx
Although no one can be absolutely sure of the origins of all of the growing lionfish population in the Atlantic, DNA investigations suggest that the entire population is descended from just three separate females.

This tells me that people are only guessing the original lionfish came from that aquarium. Mitochondrial DNA testing would confirm how many maternal lines are involved and since there are only 3 here, I suspect blaming it on the 1 time release is the favourable answer. I mean what are the odds that 1 person released 3 lionfish at the same time as the storm or 3 independent people each released one? Not very good.

This last article tells me they did not have samples of the original aquarium residents, however it's not as unlikely as you seem to think. Scientists like to track invading species using molecular markers and if lionfish have been found in the area before they could have sampled the aquarium fish to develop markers. It's not unlikely for researchers to use specimens from zoos and aquarium, etc.

But in this this case, it all appears to be speculation based on mitochondrial DNA markers in fish caught from the Keys....media people always like to dumb things down leaving out key pieces of information....very annoying!

But that's just my interpretation of the vague information available at this time

Originally Posted by justinl

Anybody have a link or the title of the paper that spshelps is referring to? I'm just curious about the DNA tracking methods used... and frankly a little dubious. I'm no genetics guru myself, but I can't imagine any way to accomplish such a thing unless the 6-8 fish in question had had tissue samples taken from them and preserved (not likely unless they were originally experimental subjects). This would of course also require the samples to be available to the researchers (not impossible, assuming they were from a public aquarium), that the researchers were aware of the samples, and that the researchers had independent tissue samples of other fish to compare. Seems like too much of a miracle scenario to me.

edit: a quick literature search turns up not much. far as I can tell, the exact origin is still a mystery though the aquarium trade is getting most of the speculative blame.

[corpusse]

Originally Posted by Funky_Fish14

Yeah I too highly doubt it was just from those 8 fish...

I've also heard of sightings of them almost as far north as New York.

I remember reading about them in nyc. Maybe not so much there but in florida, I think it would be pretty fun to spend the day hunting lion fish.

[saltcreep]

There are issues with other non-native species in most parts of Florida, not just lionfish. These fish are being reported in the Carolinas and further north.

There has been speculation about a now defunct wholesaler dumping fish in the Miami area where a higher than normal concentration of non-native fish have been found.