This week, we welcomed our first research visitor for the year – Mr. Hirozumi Kobayashi!

It’s his first visit to LKCNHM, and he came with Dr. Tohru Naruse, who is an old friend of the museum. 🙂

Mr. Hirozumi Kobayashi (left), with Prof. Peter Ng (middle), and Dr. Tohru Naruse (right) in the LKCNHM research lab. Photo: Dr. Tan Heok Hui.

Mr. Kobayashi is a Master’s student at the University of the Ryukyus, in Okinawa. His research focus is on the study of cave animals, such as cave crabs and cave fish.

On this visit, he is collaborating with the head of the museum (Prof. Peter Ng) to identify a Discoplax cave crab collected from the Ryukyus Islands. Mr. Kobayashi suspects that it may be a new geographic record of the crab – to date, it has only been found in the Philippines.

To solve the mystery, he has been comparing the specimen with those in our Zoological Reference Collection (ZRC), to try and determine if they match morphologically.

He has also collected some tissue material to run a genetic analysis back in Japan.

Mr. Kobayashi is also working with our resident fish expert (Dr. Tan Heok Hui) to determine the identity of a goby fish from the genus Eleotris. The specimen that he found from the Ryukyu Islands is suspected to be the same species as those collected from the previous Christmas Island expeditions.

Likewise, in order to determine the identity of the specimen, he has been comparing it to those in the ZRC, along with genetic analysis to be conducted back in Japan.

Before he leaves tomorrow, Mr. Kobayashi will also be examining fish specimens from the genus Oryzias in the ZRC, for future research purposes.

We wish Mr. Kobayashi all the best in his research, and hope to see him again!