She received an American Society of Ichthyology and Herpetology award to travel to museums to collect data.
MYTHOLOGICAL ELEPHANT PREDATORS SKIN
“The denticles on the tenacula are thought to help the male grab onto the slippery skin of the female during mating, which is especially helpful in deep waters where there is little light, and mating can be difficult.”įor her project, Kern is using museum specimens to look at how structures change across the three families of chimaeras. The structure I’m investigating is called the tenaculum and can only be found in males,” Kern explained.
“My research focuses on a sexually dimorphic structure, which means that males and females look different and have different body plans. She is investigating their functional morphology, including why the males have a forehead appendage that hooks onto females during mating. I mean, who doesn’t love a spooky, weird fish?”įor her study, Kern is doing a deep dive on a special structure found only in these fish. The entire lab now knows and loves these critters because of Katie. Her enthusiasm is always apparent and infectious. “She has collected more data in her first year of graduate school than any student I have ever mentored. “It was clear that she had specific questions about the functional anatomy in a really hard-to-study fish,” said Paig-Tran, associate professor of biological science. When Kern first contacted her research adviser, Misty Paig-Tran, about graduate school, she immediately honed in on focusing her thesis project on chimaeras. “They are sort of like the Frankenstein of animals - mashed into one charismatic fish.”Ĭhimaeras, anywhere from 2 feet to 6 feet long depending on the species, are found in nearly every ocean and in depths of about 6,500 feet. A few even look like the familiar pet ghost dog, Zero, from the ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ movie,” said Kern, who first learned about the mysterious fish in an undergraduate shark biology class. “When you see them swim, it’s easy to understand how they get their name of ghost shark as they glide along the deep ocean bottom. Their big eyes allow them to see with no light as they creep in the dark hunting for food. Some species have a large, long, elephant-like nose. The fish resembles a shark (they are distant relatives), has big round eyes like a rabbit, a long and skinny rat-like tail, ever-growing tooth plates similar to a rodent and a large venomous spine on their top fin. In Greek mythology, the chimaera is a mythological creature that is an amalgamation of different animals fused together, said Kern, a Cal State Fullerton biology graduate student. This ghostlike fish that lurks on the ocean floor might be one of the spookiest creatures of the deep, dark ocean.Ĭhimaeras also are known as ghost sharks, ratfish, spookfish, rabbitfish and water bunnies. Marine biology researcher Katie Kern is studying chimaeras, a deep-sea fish that has no bones, but a skeleton made of cartilage and a forehead appendage with spiky teeth. Image courtesy of NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research, Gulf of Mexico 2017 Cal State Fullerton biology graduate student Katie Kern is studying chimaeras for her thesis project. A Harriotta raleighana, a long-nosed chimaera, swims in the Gulf of Mexico.
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