Animal Crossing Fish - Explained #203
Brought to you by a marine biologist with a well-cared for endemic species...
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I’ve spoken about endemism a number of times in this series, but it deserves to be covered again, in much more depth, like, what it means, how it happens, and the vulnerability of such organisms. Today’s fish, the Black Ruby Barb, is one such fish, and you’ll be amazed what its country of origin has done to protect it!
The Black Ruby Barb (BRB) appeared in Pocket Camp during fishing tourney #39 in June 2021 and hasn’t been back since as far as I can tell. It is a freshwater fish, so you could fish for it in the Lost Lure Creek.
Not only is BRB a freshwater fish, but it is also a Cyprinid, a fish belonging to the carp Family Cyprinidae. We have covered Cyprinids so much in this series, I’m really going to skip over it for now. However, the BRB is from the Subfamily Barbinae, which, isn’t entirely sorted out yet. Fish known as “barbs” go here for the most part. If you are an avid freshwater hobbyist, that name should be familiar as many species appear in the aquarium pet trade, including the BRB. The Black Ruby Barb is also called the Purplehead Barb, (Pethia nigrofasciata). Because they are bred to be pets, like other aquarium fish, they now come in a wide variety of domesticated forms.
Now, when you see “endemic” and “pet trade” in the same post, you should also see an “uh oh”. Indeed, the Black Ruby Barb is endemic to two freshwater basins in Sri Lanka, an island nation just off the coast of India. As you can imagine, their numbers plummeted due to overharvest for the pet trade. Are we surprised? Of course not - but you’ll be surprised to find out in 2020 Sri Lanka banned all harvest of the BRB, and now breed the fish to still provide for the aquarium market. My hope is that a steady supply of farmed fish will eliminate attempts at illegal harvest. I’m not saying I have faith, I’m just hoping.
Sri Lanka is an amazing place with *a lot* of endemic species - helps to be a tropical island nation that’s *just* close enough to Southeast Asia to have gotten a large batch of organisms to work with, including large mammals like elephants! Endemic broadly means the organism is found no where else on Earth, but more specifically, that they are isolated and restricted to a very particular environment. Islands, like Sri Lanka, are a perfect place for this to arise, especially for freshwater and terrestrial animals stuck there because they can’t cross seawater. After being isolated from the mainland, those organisms begin to evolve in a different direction than their mainland counterparts, adapting to their island specifically, eventually evolving into completely separate species. This is called “allopatric speciation”, in which geographical barriers have interfered with natural gene flow. Though islands are an obvious place where this happens, endemism can happen anywhere a population becomes isolated. So, mountain peaks in tropical areas, volcanoes, lakes with no outlets, and certain marine habitats like black smokers and sea mounts, can be hot beds for endemism. Hell, even large, busy highways can split populations of species that just can’t get across the road without becoming pancakes!
As you can imagine, this natural restriction leaves these organisms very vulnerable to extinction. For many, destruction of their very specific habitat could deal a huge blow they may not be able to recover from. Which is why what Sri Lanka has done for the BRB, a tiny fish, is incredible and I wish more places would do that!
And there you have it! Fascinating stuff, no?
