Taiwan, China ranks first globally in eel diversity, and a newly published fish species has been named after Taiwan

Text/National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium

The National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium (hereafter the Museum) will soon publish an academic special issue on Taiwan's eels, confirming that Taiwan has as many as 207 species of eels, far more than countries such as Japan, the Philippines and Australia, and that Taiwan's eel diversity ranks first in the world.

Taiwan's eels number 14 families, 75 genera and 207 species, the most in the world

The research special issue planned and published by Museum associate researcher Ho Hsuan-ching will appear in the international journal Zootaxa, scheduled for publication on December 24, with a total of 14 papers published, adding 42 eel species to Taiwan at once, including 1 new genus, 13 new species for Taiwan and 29 newly recorded species.

The scholars participating in the publication come from Taiwan, China, Japan, the United States, Australia, Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, among others. This international collaborative study covers 7 countries and 14 authors, and is the second time since the Museum published a special issue on Taiwan's cartilaginous fish diversity in 2012 that it has studied the same group of fish species as a team.

Dr. Shao Kwang-tsao, a research fellow at the Biodiversity Research Center of Academia Sinica who took part in the publication, pointed out that the most difficult and also most important part of this study is the final paper, "A Checklist and Notes on the Eels of Taiwan." In earlier years, because information was not well developed, there were many cases of misused scientific names. This time, integrating the opinions of experts worldwide, all past papers and books were re-examined, summarizing all eel research content from Taiwan over the past more than one hundred years, and confirming in total that Taiwan's eels comprise 14 families, 75 genera and 207 species, far exceeding all countries in the world.

Shao Kwang-tsao also believes that with fewer and fewer taxonomic talents today, cross-border cooperation is necessary; in this way everyone can quickly solve taxonomic problems and share the results.

Many endemic species; two new genus and new species of eels named after Taiwan

The eels everyone knows best are mainly kabayaki eel (Japanese eel) and braised eel (conger eel), but in fact the species diversity of eels is quite high, with nearly one thousand species worldwide, found from freshwater, shallow seas and coral reefs to the deep sea.

Eel research in Taiwan began in 1967, when National Taiwan Museum director Professor Chen Chien-shan comprehensively reviewed Taiwan's eels, recording 65 species in total, including 4 new species. Later, in the Fishes of Taiwan published in 1993108

Recently, through the efforts of researchers from institutions such as Academia Sinica, National Taiwan Ocean University and the Museum, and by inviting the world's two most authoritative eel taxonomists to come to Taiwan successively to take part in research, a considerable amount of research results has been obtained within just a few years. These include the previously published new genus and new species Ho's snake eel and multiple new species and newly recorded species.

In addition, Ho Hsuan-ching and others also summarized this time that Taiwan alone had previously published 42 new species of eels, accounting for 1/5 of all species, among which 36 species are valid species, and as many as 23 are endemic to Taiwan; in the future there are still more new species awaiting clarification and publication. Ho Hsuan-ching has spent years searching for specimens in the bycatch piles at Taiwan's fishing ports and over the past ten years has collected over a thousand eel specimens, after which he identifies them one by one from these specimens to find new genera or new species, proving that as long as you work with dedication, there will certainly be results.

At the same time this also shows the importance of preserving biological specimens. "If we do not seriously think about how to permanently preserve these biological samples, perhaps these nameless new species will go extinct before we discover them!" said Dr. Ho Hsuan-ching.

It is worth mentioning that the new genus and new species Taiwan flat eel and Taiwan anterior nostril eel published this time have only been found in Taiwan, so they are named after Taiwan, the place of origin of their type specimens; moreover, as many as 10 new species are endemic to Taiwan, letting the whole world see Taiwan in an objective way.