Rock‑Climbing Fish Scale a 50‑Foot Waterfall Using Tiny Hooks in Their Fins www.discovermagazine.com/rock-climbin...

Insect emerging from nymph stage

Very cool sighting with my non-majors conservation biology class yesterday. Perfect timing as we were sampling macroinvertebrates at a local park.

These rock-climbing fish can shimmy up a 50-foot waterfall Shellear fish have certain anatomical traits making it possible for them to climb as well as swim. Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala

Shellear fish in the Democratic Republic of Congo scale 50-foot vertical waterfalls using pectoral fins equipped with hook-like structures. Researcher Pacifique Kiwele Mutambala confirms the migration, warning that local dam projects threaten the species’ unique aquatic pathways.

Diagram depicting phylogenetic relationships among several elongated catfishes.

Pleased to share a new phylogeny for the airbreathing or walking catfishes from the family Clariidae - part of my postdoctoral work at the AMNH in collaboration with Tobit Liyandja and Melanie Stiassny: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Tiny African fish caught climbing to the top of a 50-foot waterfall For over half a century, people in Central Africa have told tales of the fish seen climbing waterfalls, but these claims have never been officially confirmed. Now, these fish have finally been caught ...

Tiny shellear fish in central Africa scale a 50-foot vertical waterfall using suction cups and tiny hooks. This convergent evolution places them with some island gobies and Brazilian bumblebee catfish, who all do world class bouldering. 🐟🌍

phys.org/news/2026-04...

New mormyrid alert! Gnathonemus marqueti is described from the Lufira basin of D.R. Congo and G. brevicaudatus is revalidated in this new article by Mukweze Mulelenu et al. in Zool. J. Linn. Soc. doi.org/10.1093/zool...

How a Bill Gates-Backed Company Landed in a Fight Between Congo and Belgium Antique maps and other geological archives are at the heart of an increasingly ugly showdown between Belgium’s colonial museum and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Reading. www.wsj.com/world/africa...

What level? Lab or just lecture?

Epic river migrations of fish rapidly collapsing, UN report finds Vast journeys, among world’s great wonders, found to be under threat as freshwater fish populations crash by 81%

Many freshwater fish populations are collapsing, according to the most comprehensive assessment to date by the UN’s Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species, which found freshwater fish populations worldwide have crashed by about 81% since 1970.🐟🧪

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Interested in joining my lab and the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute? Guillaume Rieucau (LUMCON) and I have incoming funding to support a masters student who will use imaging sonar and traditional sampling to study how fishes utilize artificial reefs in Lake Pontchartrain.

10 days remaining to submit your Mini-ARTS award! These awards are for revisionary taxonomy and systematics. Up to $4,000 is available per award. For guidelines and to submit your application, see our website

www.systbio.org/mini-arts-aw...

rambaut/figtree Automatically exported from code.google.com/p/figtree - rambaut/figtree

The first version of FigTree was released nearly 20 years ago and it is still widely used (including by me). But there are currently 85 issues on the GitHub repo (github.com/rambaut/figt...) and some of them I don’t really like the look of.

Just published: A very unusual fish, described here as a new genus and species of loach, and the first groundwater-dwelling fish reported from Northeast India. Meet 𝑮𝒊𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒂𝒌 𝒏𝒂𝒌𝒂𝒏𝒂! Open access article here: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Based on available data for living species, there are 37,520 species of non-tetrapod fishes vs. 33,281 tetrapod species. 🤓 #TheMoreYouKnow

Source for non-tetrapod fish species data: researcharchive.calacademy.org/research/ich...

Source for tetrapod species data:
zenodo.org/records/1053...

Bumping to the Fishes! and Science feeds🐟🧪

A note on the recognition of genera Amphilius and Anoplopterus within mountain catfishes (Amphiliidae: Amphiliinae) of Africa | Zootaxa

Open access note on the recent taxonomic changes in the mountain catfishes of Africa. mapress.com/zt/article/v...

To add: @andrewjohnston.bsky.social wrote a great blog post about his photo stacking system, which you can read here: www.insectid.org/post/focus-s.... It's more expensive, but you get better results! I'll be adding this link to my post, since I forgot earlier.

There are 8 million fish in a World War II bunker outside New Orleans. More arrive soon. Hidden in a World War II bunker near New Orleans, Tulane stores more than 8 million preserved fish — and the collection is still growing.

Great news article about the Tulane University Biodiversity Research Institute's Royal D. Suttkus Fish Collection and our recent accessions of specimens from the DEEPEND Consortium and the University of Louisiana at Monroe.

The past few years I've given my students assignments to create Wikipedia pages on various topics. This semester's Fisheries Management students were assigned to write about an ichthyologist/fisheries manager that didn't have a page, with emphasis on women or POC encouraged. I'm sharing them here:

🧪🐠 I am hiring a postdoc! Work will be on patterns of biodiversity across phylogenetic scales using teleost fishes as a model. Apply by end of Jan 2026 for full consideration apply.interfolio.com/179070 I encourage folks to reach out with any questions. Please Share!

NEWS from Ohio State Fish Division: You can now search our 6,000-tissue collection on our website! 🐟

mbd.osu.edu/collections/...

Hidden diversity of the widespread Opsaridium ubangiense (Cypriniformes: Danionidae) in Central Africa | Zootaxa

mapress.com/zt/article/v...
Excited to see this out. Started with RMC students in 2019 and mostly finished in the spring of 2020..... Worked & added over the years, but other projects pulled me away. Submitted it this summer! RMC funds allow for open access so take a look! Photo by M.C.W. Keijman.

I'm recruiting a Ph.D. student for Fall 2026.

Interested in comparative studies and trait evolution in fishes?

Send me an email with a CV and research interests. Please take a look at my website (jcorush.github.io ) for more information about my research.

#hybridization #minnows #mudskippers

A diagram showing the Carolina madtom's sharp pectoral fin spines

2 Fast, 2 Furiosus: The Carolina madtom’s species name “furiosus” is a reference to the sharp sting they can deliver to would-be predators + clumsy fish biologists. These bee-like stings come from the large spines on their pectoral fins that deliver a mild (but painful) venom #25DaysofFishmas

fry from futurama says " and it 's all thanks to the books at my local library .. " ALT: fry from futurama says " and it 's all thanks to the books at my local library .. "

Step 1: Sign up for a FREE library card at your local library today.

Step 2: Enter a world of possibilities.

Step 3: Share some of the library joy that is sure to come.

Cover and sample pages of a new book entitled "Handbook of Freshwater Fishes of West Asia" by Jörg Freyhof , Baran Yoğurtçuoğlu , Arash Jouladeh-Roudbar and Cüneyt Kaya.

Fellow fish nerds, I'm sharing a link to a free PDF of "The Handbook of Freshwater Fishes of West Asia". This new book provides a summary of the taxonomy, distribution, and biology of all freshwater fishes between the Bosphorus, Azerbaijan, Yemen, and Iran. 🐟

www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

Halloween News: Meet a new vampire fly (Hippoboscidae) 🧛‍♂🪰 1 of 10 species found on citizen-reported bird carcasses in Singapore: Even dead birds can have productive afterlives! See host records, annotated images, pictorial keys & DNA diagnostics here: doi.org/10.1155/jzs/...

Counting principal caudal-fin rays on some African mountain catfishes (Amphilius). 6 + 7

You guys aren't ready for this yet. But your kids are gonna love it

Adding some relevant instructional images to my lab.