What kind of fish is the desert fish? Let us introduce you to this unusual fish
Many people think, "How can there be fish in a dry, water-scarce desert?" Yet a fish species called the desert fish does indeed live in the desert. The desert fish is a relatively small fish, a member of the order Cyprinodontiformes and the family Cyprinodontidae, living in the lifeless marshland "Death Valley," which is still the lowest, driest and hottest area in North America. Let us take a look below at what on earth the desert fish is!
What on earth is the desert fish?
The desert fish is an endangered fish species that lives in the lifeless marshland "Death Valley." The rare water source in the desert is a necessary condition for its survival, and the habitat of all its populations is a small pool in Death Valley, but because the groundwater resources have dried up, it is on the verge of extinction. However, the behavior of the desert fish depends on the environment of its habitat, and excessive reliance on its only habitat makes the desert fish of Devils Hole prone to extinction. For this reason, people built three refuges imitating the environment of Devils Hole, and after 5 years they found that the phenotypes of the desert fish in the refuges differed greatly from those in Devils Hole.
Where does the desert fish live?
"Devils Hole," 96 km east of Death Valley, is the only natural habitat of the desert fish. Geologists estimate that this hole is at least 130 m deep and was formed 500,000 years ago, and that these fish arrived in this hole no more than 50,000 years ago. 50,000 years ago, possibly because of an earthquake, the roof of the cave collapsed, exposing it and the water inside. The water in Devils Hole is very low in oxygen, and the temperature stays at 33.3-33.9°C, which is the upper limit of the temperature that most fish can tolerate.
How did the desert fish come to be?
The body shape, brain and behavior of the desert fish are all very flexible, and their development is greatly influenced by the environment of their early years. This flexibility is called phenotypic plasticity, and it plays a key role in the formation of the phenotypic diversity of the desert fish. Many animals, such as bees and vertebrates, have phenotypic plasticity, and the formation of some special phenotypes depends on their special habitats; once the habitat changes, the phenotypic characteristics also change. Plasticity also has a genetic basis, being jointly determined by the chromosome set of the biological individual and the living environment. A new direction of adaptive evolution depends on the organism itself being variable, and this variation jointly depends on the genotype and on structural, physiological and behavioral phenotypic plasticity.