An Ichthyologist’s Digest
Sparked by his interest in fishes since his youth, our ichthyologist (one who studies fishes) Dr Tan Heok Hui realised his career pathway when he entered the National University of Singapore. From then on, he never looked back, pouring his years into studying the taxonomy, ecology and biogeography of Southeast Asian freshwater fishes and describing over 100 new species of these fishes.
In this session, he shared about two of his recent research papers published in September 2021. The first describes the very first cave dwelling cyprinid fish from Mindanao, which is quite the sensational discovery for Philippines freshwater aquatic biodiversity as he explains with much enthusiasm.
You can’t help but be sucked into his passion as he went on to talk about his favourite subject: the Borneo sucker loaches. The other paper ties up a loose end from his doctoral project—it was only 15 years later, with sufficient, fresh material, that he could finally put out descriptions of a new genus and two new species, closing a chapter on his research journey!
Here is the recording of this session:
