After Breeding Two Fossil Fish, Hungarian Scientists Accidentally Create New Fish Species

Two fossil fish, American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon, were bred together resulting in the birth of a new species of 'Sturddlefish.'?Scientists were initially trying to save a species but they instead created a fish that's part sturgeon, part paddlefish, all by accident.

Phys.org

A team from Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture, Hungary, were using paddlefish sperm to try to coax eggs from the endangered sturgeon, in a process called gynogenesis.??

Gynogenesis is an asexual reproduction method which requires the presence of sperm without the contribution of their DNA for completion.?

The new hybrid was created when paddlefish sperm fertilised the sturgeon eggs, which the scientists didn’t think could happen.??

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Scientists have been trying to breed the fish in captivity because habitat loss, overfishing and pollution have taken a heavy toll on paddlefish and sturgeon fish,?

Scientist Attila Mozsár from the Research Institute for Fisheries and Aquaculture in Hungary, in addition to the other scientists responsible for the new fish hybrid, revealed their findings in a study published in the?scientific journal Genes?this month.??

CNN

When the scientists placed sperm from an American paddlefish near eggs from a Russian sturgeon, the DNA ended up being introduced to the egg. The eggs were fertilized and a new hybrid fish called ‘sturddlefish’ came to be, with about 100 of the hybrid fish being born.

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But they weren't supposed to hybridize. Previous hybridization attempts between American paddlefish and other sturgeons hadn't worked, the authors wrote.?

They chose American paddlefish sperm because they assumed the two species would be unable to reproduce, as they never come into contact with one another.?The team, which never meant to create these hybrids in the first place, has vowed not to breed any more of them.??

The sturgeon isn't so genetically different from paddlefish, they belong to the same group, Acipenseriformes.

?Balázs Kovács, an aquaculture geneticist at Szent István University explained to?USA Today?that these two species are evolutionarily far from each other making them “a very special hybrid."??

The researchers think the hybridization could be due to the slow evolution seen in these species. Both the American paddlefish and Russian sturgeon are considered to be ‘living fossils’ as both the species that have remained relatively unchanged for millions of years.

Sturgeon hybrids are typically used in aquaculture and provide around 20% of global caviar production, the researchers said. The hybrids will now live peacefully at a research facility in Hungary,?they will be cared for but not released into the wild.

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