Ecuadorian Amazon Initiative
Imagine a meter-long catfish with a large mouth like a suction cup, and a body covered in bony plates like an armadillo and spines like a cactus – a fish so rare that even life-long indigenous inhabitants of the Amazon have never seen one. This was one of several landmark discoveries recently documented for the first time in Ecuador by an international team of biologists from Ecuador’s University of the Americas and Canada’s Royal Ontario Museum. For this expedition, the Our Children’s Earth Foundation provided a filmmaker, Ivy Yin, to document the ongoing research efforts being conducted by this team.
Ecuador is the most biodiverse country on Earth for its size – a distinction that motivates millions of domestic and foreign tourists to visit its forests, mountains, and national parks. “Protecting the diversity of Ecuador’s plants and animals is vitally important for future generations both in Ecuador and around the world, but how can Ecuador’s biodiversity be protected if we don’t know what species exist where, and what human impacts threaten each species?” These are some of the questions the team set out to answer, says expedition leader Dr. Jose Vicente Montoya, an aquatic ecologist at the University of the Americas. Dr. Montoya and expedition co-leader Dr. Nathan Luján, a fish biologist from the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, sought to address these questions by combining traditional fish sampling methods, such as hooks and nets, with a holistic approach that included a survey of microscopic life in the river sediments, and newer cutting-edge techniques that have previously never been used in Ecuador.
Among the newest techniques that the team used is a high-tech method for detecting rare species that relies on tiny particles of DNA in the environment, similar to the latest forensic methods used by police detectives in Hollywood movies. “The power of this method,” says Dr. Montoya, “is comparable to magic.” As every organism moves through its environment, it sheds tiny skin cells and bodily fluids which carry their DNA, leaving a temporary genetic signature of their existence. Such particles of DNA are called ‘environmental DNA,’ and these get aggregated in streams and rivers and carried downstream. There, Drs. Montoya and Lujan and their team collected them with a special filter, trapping the tiny, DNA-carrying particles from myriad animals living throughout the watershed. In a laboratory, the DNA can be separated from the particles and can be read like names in a book using specialized equipment. Thus, the scientists can determine which species live in the watershed, without ever actually seeing the animals. For detecting especially rare species, like manatees, the technique is revolutionary. Dr. Lujan estimates that they collected over 220 species in total, or about a third of all the species ever reported from the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Inspiration for this research came from several workshops in 2018-19 that gathered a broad spectrum of Ecuador’s leading fisheries biologists to discuss conservation concerns. As reported in a recently published paper that also emerged from these workshops, threats to migratory catfishes of the Amazon were among the most significant concerns. Dr. Windsor Aguirre and 15 coauthors of this review paper state that throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, commercial fishing operations focus primarily on large, migratory catfishes. Dr. Aguirre and colleagues found that catches of commercially important species are declining and overfishing is a primary threat. They report that other major threats to Ecuador’s freshwater fishes include habitat loss, deforestation, wetland and floodplain degradation, agricultural and urban water pollution, mining, oil extraction, dams, introduced species, and climate change.
The biodiversity within the Ecuadorian Amazon is immense, yet scientific research on the region’s rivers and fishes is immensely scarce. So much so that discoveries of species unknown to science are still quite common. Dr. Luján needs more time to examine the specimens the team collected, but he’s confident that at least four of the fish species they collected are new to science.
Ecuador is the most biodiverse country on Earth for its size – a distinction that motivates millions of domestic and foreign tourists to visit its forests, mountains, and national parks. “Protecting the diversity of Ecuador’s plants and animals is vitally important for future generations both in Ecuador and around the world, but how can Ecuador’s biodiversity be protected if we don’t know what species exist where, and what human impacts threaten each species?” These are some of the questions the team set out to answer, says expedition leader Dr. Jose Vicente Montoya, an aquatic ecologist at the University of the Americas. Dr. Montoya and expedition co-leader Dr. Nathan Luján, a fish biologist from the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, sought to address these questions by combining traditional fish sampling methods, such as hooks and nets, with a holistic approach that included a survey of microscopic life in the river sediments, and newer cutting-edge techniques that have previously never been used in Ecuador.
Among the newest techniques that the team used is a high-tech method for detecting rare species that relies on tiny particles of DNA in the environment, similar to the latest forensic methods used by police detectives in Hollywood movies. “The power of this method,” says Dr. Montoya, “is comparable to magic.” As every organism moves through its environment, it sheds tiny skin cells and bodily fluids which carry their DNA, leaving a temporary genetic signature of their existence. Such particles of DNA are called ‘environmental DNA,’ and these get aggregated in streams and rivers and carried downstream. There, Drs. Montoya and Lujan and their team collected them with a special filter, trapping the tiny, DNA-carrying particles from myriad animals living throughout the watershed. In a laboratory, the DNA can be separated from the particles and can be read like names in a book using specialized equipment. Thus, the scientists can determine which species live in the watershed, without ever actually seeing the animals. For detecting especially rare species, like manatees, the technique is revolutionary. Dr. Lujan estimates that they collected over 220 species in total, or about a third of all the species ever reported from the Ecuadorian Amazon.
Inspiration for this research came from several workshops in 2018-19 that gathered a broad spectrum of Ecuador’s leading fisheries biologists to discuss conservation concerns. As reported in a recently published paper that also emerged from these workshops, threats to migratory catfishes of the Amazon were among the most significant concerns. Dr. Windsor Aguirre and 15 coauthors of this review paper state that throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, commercial fishing operations focus primarily on large, migratory catfishes. Dr. Aguirre and colleagues found that catches of commercially important species are declining and overfishing is a primary threat. They report that other major threats to Ecuador’s freshwater fishes include habitat loss, deforestation, wetland and floodplain degradation, agricultural and urban water pollution, mining, oil extraction, dams, introduced species, and climate change.
The biodiversity within the Ecuadorian Amazon is immense, yet scientific research on the region’s rivers and fishes is immensely scarce. So much so that discoveries of species unknown to science are still quite common. Dr. Luján needs more time to examine the specimens the team collected, but he’s confident that at least four of the fish species they collected are new to science.