There’s a teeny tiny little wrasse living in the Gulf of Mexico called哈利希尔socialiswhich is all but unknown in the aquarium world, and it may not last long of this world at all. Living over a tiny 10 square kilometer of reef called Pelican Cays in Belize, the social wrasse is threatened with extinction and listed as critically endangered by the IUCN red list.
The fact that the social wrasse lives over such a small area of less than four square miles makes it particularly vulnerable to localized natural disasters since it can’t repopulate from other areas in the Caribbean. Had the BP Oil Spill occurred closer to its natural habitat Halichoeres socialis might already be done for but another real menace threatens to wipe exterminate this species in the relative blink of en eye.
The invasive lionfish that’s been spreading quickly throughout this side of the Atlantic Ocean likes to eat fish, and it can put down the equivalent of a dozen social wrasses每天! Now that the lionfish has made it to Belize there’s a very real possibility that翼战士could eat up the entire population of哈利希尔socialis,甚至在短短几年内。
Ichhysoloks Luiz Rocha是我们所说的“水族馆海洋鱼”的专家，他现在在伯利兹，试图评估哈利希尔socialispopulations, survey its environment for localized degradation and to capture some lionfish to assay if the social wrasse is already a part of its diet. Unfortunately, the odds seems rather rather low that the social wrasse could survive a long term assault by the ravenous lionfish coupled with habitat loss.
尽管水族馆的爱好并没有熟练地养育任何种类的斗鸡，但在我们看来，这似乎是唯一的长期解决方案来保护社交劳动作为一种物种，就是建立“水族馆蜜饯”，这种鱼可以自由地生活在其中在捕食者和污染的范围之外。在加勒比海地区分布有限的其他小礁鱼面临捕食性lion鱼的蔓延面临类似的威胁之后，可能只是时间问题。
Case in point is the social wrasse’s closely related sibling species哈利希尔burekae到目前为止，只有从墨西哥湾的花园库中知道的。谁知道lion鱼可能会因灭绝而威胁多少种，未来其他礁鱼可能会受到类似的威胁，但是随着海洋水族馆的繁殖方面的繁殖方，每年都会随着飞跃的发展，我们每年都有飞跃的发展，我们要支持一个支持水族馆中稀有和脆弱的礁鱼的“方舟”保留了我们已经与许多石质珊瑚所做的方式。[[NY Times]
