Now threatened by the biodiversity crisis, freshwater fish were once apocalypse survivors

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-08-28 09:01

International

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Many freshwater fish are facing a dire future from our current biodiversity crisis, but international researchers say their ancestors held up surprisingly well when the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs hit. The team say it has been difficult to know for sure how freshwater fish responded to the asteroid, which marked the end of the Cretaceous period and caused a major shake-up in the world's biodiversity. Analysing fossil data alongside genetic information from species alive today, the researchers say there is evidence that several branches of the fishy family tree actually experienced bursts of diversification after the asteroid hit. However, the researchers say where there were drops in diversity, it took more than 100,000 years to recover, which could give us an indication of how long the current biodiversity crisis could affect fish populations in the future.

Media release

From: The Royal Society

Freshwater fish and the Cretaceous/Palaeogene boundary: A critical assessment of survivorship patterns

The asteroid impact marking the end Cretaceous famously shaped the modern biota by killing off some lineages, such as non-avian dinosaurs, while promoting the success of others, such as mammals. In this study, we examined the hypothesis that the end Cretaceous had surprisingly little effect on freshwater fish, whose survivorship during climatic stress is of increasing interest as society confronts the implications of our current biodiversity crisis. A synthesis of genomic and fossil data indicates that some major freshwater groups actually expanded after the event with localized drops in diversity taking more than 100K years to recover.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society B

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, USA

Funder: Fieldwork funding was provided by M. L. and S. R. Kneller to T.R.L. This work was also funded in part by grants to J.D.W. from the Paleontological Society and the Explorers Club and to .RT.L. by NSF-FRES-2317666

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