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Watts et al. 2013. Examination of a culturable microbial population from the gastrointestinal tract of the wood-eating loricariid catfish Panaque nigrolineatus. Diversity 5(3), 641-656. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d5030641.

Thanks for the link, Racoll

I noticed a potential mistake with species used. They say the specimens used were Panaque nigrolineatus, imported from the Rio Xingu, Peru. Unless I'm mistaken, the Xingu river is in Brazil, potentially making them Panaque cf. armbrusteri . Given that these have different mouth and teeth structures, could this skew the results?

Hi all,

Watts et al. 2013. Examination of a culturable microbial population from the gastrointestinal tract of the wood-eating loricariid catfish Panaque nigrolineatus. Diversity 5(3), 641-656. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/d5030641.

Thank you for posting this, it is an interesting paper. I'll see if I can get a comment, it would be interesting to hear what Donovan German makes of it <http://www.planetcatfish.com/forum/view ... an#p241856>.

I noticed a potential mistake with species used. They say the specimens used were

Panaque nigrolineatus

, imported from the Rio Xingu, Peru. Unless I'm mistaken, the Xingu river is in Brazil, potentially making them

Panaque cf_armbrusteri`xingu`

. Given that these have different mouth and teeth structures, could this skew the results?

It would depend upon diet, but assuming they are both largely xylophagous probably not.

cheers Darrel

matthewfaulkner wrote:Given that these have different mouth and teeth structures, could this skew the results?

Not sure "skew" is the right word, but could certainly make the study less or even non-applicable to the named species (P. nigrolineatus) if there are differences between their gut floras.

Hi all,
I'm a bit pushed for time at the moment, but I've had an email from Joy Watts (Lead Author) in Portsmouth <http://www.port.ac.uk/departments/acade ... 93,en.html>, and she cautions that she doesn't know much about fish, but it looks like they were Panaque nigrolineatus (L190).

She told me that Jay Nelson (Towson <http://pages.towson.edu/nelson/Panaque/panaque.html>) sourced and ID'ed them.

I'll post the other bits she sent me tomorrow, as they are quite interesting.

cheers Darrel

Hi all,
This is the rest of Joy's message

So the Panaque project- it is really interesting....... I think Donovan German has characterized the GI tract physical conditions very thoroughly. I think our recent work shows that bacteria are involved in wood degradation in the GI tract- but, whether the fish obtain anything form this is still out for debate- we are just trying some metabolomics to see if we can better understand any fermentation metabolism present, but i think its going to be tricky.

So fish species, I'm afraid I'm definitely the microbiologist on this project- and Jay Nelson was responsible for the fish sourcing and identification, but I will forward your email to him to check the details. I know that we constantly refer to these as L-190, however as you mention I think the taxonomy is evolving and I don't know how robust this is.

For me the really interesting bit is:

"I think our recent work shows that bacteria are involved in wood degradation in the GI tract- but, whether the fish obtain anything form this is still out for debate- we are just trying some metabolomics to see if we can better understand any fermentation metabolism present, but i think its going to be tricky"

cheers Darrel