n the warm shallows of a small coral cay on Queensland’s Coral Coast, a spotted fish peeks out of its cave, eyes darting sideways looking for predators.
The Lady Elliot shrimp goby is small but striking.
The Lady Elliot shrimp goby was discovered a year ago as part of a collaborative Leaf to Reef research project, the findings of which were published today in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation.
Dr Dudgeon says the jury is still out on whether the research team has discovered other new species.
“We think they may be a new species, but we now need to examine their morphology and genetics to determine if that’s the case or not,” she said. "We’ve got over 5,000 species in Australian territorial waters altogether, but the Great Barrier Reef is certainly a stand-out area for diversity.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It may be tiny, but this fish – the first completely new species found on the Great Barrier Reef since 2019 – is causing a stir among marine biologists that far outweighs its size.
Dr Dudgeon said researchers thought they had stumbled onto a group of shrimp gobies that had not been recorded on the Great Barrier Reef and did not expect to discover an entirely new species.
The Lady Elliot shrimp goby was discovered a year ago as part of a collaborative Leaf to Reef research project, the findings of which were published today in the Journal of the Ocean Science Foundation.
Leaf to Reef project leader Kathy Townsend, a Sunshine Coast University associate professor, said researching new species was very important.
She said it helped to identify the ecosystems in need of protection and to measure “species drift”, which allowed researchers to track the impact of climate change and safeguard against it.
“We have fish and birds appearing in places they haven’t been found before, which emphasises the important role that Lady Elliot Island plays as a wildlife refuge and a shelter for northern tropical species moving south to escape warming oceans,” Dr Townsend said.
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