The Liopropoma genus of marine basslets includes some very beautiful species, many of which are rarely or never seen alive due to their preference for very deep water. However today we’ve got a specimen of a hybrid Liopropoma which is the rarest of them all.
This very unusual fish was recently collected by Dynasty Marine and it show the clear blend of features between the two more common species of Caribbean Liopropoma. The cave basslet, L. mowbrayi and the swissguard basslet, L. rubre, are the two most commonly collected species of this genus.
However when you cross these two species you get a beautiful orange fish with thin red stripes that looks more like a Pacific Liopropoma species. This is the first notable observation of a Liopropoma hybrid ever documented – we’ve long ruminated what a cross of the striped candy x swissguard might look like, seeing as they look very similar, but never would have believed that we’d see the cave basslet cross of a swissguard before the candy basslet.
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