Title: 'Overhead view of a group of Eastern mosquitofish (_Gambusia holbrooki_) in a pond in the Pee Dee region of South Carolina.'
Creator: Hunter Desportes
Date: 2011
Medium: Photography
Copyright: Creative Commons
Tiny fish dart about in stagnant water, seeking out even tinyer wigglers. These so called 'mosquitofish' are very tough, being able to survive in extremely harsh environments, including in hot (up to 42°C), de-oxygenated, highly salty water. The appear to be resistant to impressive array of pollutants; including sewerage, heavy metals, insectecides, herbecides, and rotenone (a chemical often used as a 'fishicides') and even radiation. In short, they shall inherit the earth.
Coming from a genus of species with the Latin name *Gambusia*, meaning 'unless' in Cuban Spanish, about 40 species of tiny fish, among the smallest vertebrates, from various freshwater ecosystems across the Americas and the Caribbean. Some members of the genus with nine species of Gambusia being vulnerable to extinction, two are critically endangered and two have already been declared extinct. This above pictured fish, Gambusia holbrooki, better known as the Eastern mosquitofish, evolved in the east of the USA. They eat extraordinary quantities of a wide range of things, including freshwater zooplankton, beetle, mayflies, mites, scavenged detritus, various invertebrates, even their own young, and with a particular penchant for water borne insect larvae. This larvivorus diet led to the mosquitofish, as its name suggests, being used as a living bio-weapon to combat mosquitoes, and the disease that these bloodsuckers spread.
Because of this, Eastern mosquitofish were purposely introduced to many an exotic ecosystems, part of a biological globalization, across Europe, Middle East, through to South America and Australia. In the Russian city of Sochi on the Black Sea, a monument celebrates the mostquitofish, commending it with eradicating malaria in the region. Their introduction was not always met with monuments; in Australia, mosquitofish are considered a noxious pest and outright environmental hazard, while having negligible impact on mosquito-borne disease. They have caused major problems to local waterways, deverstating the web of processes and relations that keep rivers healthy.
Eastern mosquitofish can breed very rapidly -- firing off fifty babies per brood, up to nine broods in a year -- with the young reaching the age of sexual reproduction at just two months, to say nothing of their aggressive behaviour and wide-ranging diet, they can out-compete many a fellow fish. Also, by consuming zooplankton that eat algae, they increase the chances of algae blooms, thereby reducing the water quality whereupon other fish die out, but they survive and flourish. Again, they shall inherit the earth.
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