The giant gibbousness - read/write head headfish , Mola alexandrini , has been keeping a petite secret . Its larval form had remain a mystery to ocean scientist until now , but thanks to the combined efforts of scientist from Australia and New Zealand the other life stage of one of the Earth ’s prominent Pisces has finally been uncovered . To the pleasure of all who relish thing that aresmol and squishy , the larva of the gargantuan bump - head sunfish is preposterously tiny and resemble something between a cinnamon crush and a snowflake . The discovery was announced by theAustralian Museum , whose collections were constitutional to the research .
The bump - head sunfish is one of threeMolaspecies that occupy Australian waters and is matched in weight only by its congener , the sea sunfish , also bonk as theMola mola . It can grow to more than 3 meters ( 9.8 feet ) and weigh over 2,000 kilograms ( 4,400 pound ) . It drop its life displace between the ocean depths and the sea Earth’s surface where it can be notice basking on its side in fiat to heat up up under the Sun and be treated to some parasiticide groom from gulls .
Female sunfish contain the record of the highest potential fertility of any vertebrate , with adultMola molahousing 300 million ova . Given their tremendous ovulatory output , scientists were gravel as to why their bollock had never been found in the wild and why sightings of their larva were so few and far between .
To make thing easier , sunfish expert Dr Marianne Nyegaard from the Auckland War Museum decided to look for for answers in preserved museum specimen rather than take on the gigantic chore of trying to find the bump - head ’s larva out in the open ocean . Nyegaard work with Australian Museum scientists , Kerryn Parkinson and Andrew King to sieve through collections in hunting of a potential candidate . Sunfish larva unluckily seldom resemble their adult configuration , which makes identification of a specific species all the more hard .
The sample that finally give the game away was call for off the New South Wales coast in 2017 , but carrying out DNA analyses on the slight , petite specimen , which was just 5 millimeters in size , presented its own challenges . To downplay damage to the specimen , Kerryn Parkinson from the AM ’s Ichthyology division painstakingly removed a single orb that Andrew King , a genomics specializer , used to conduct the desoxyribonucleic acid extraction and analysis .
“ The DNA sequence from the live AM specimen was compare to source data generated by our outside partner , ” King explained in astatement . “ A clear match from the chronological succession was identified with samples from an grownup Bump - head Sunfish ( Mola alexandrini ) . ”
The squad now desire to utilise their determination to identify further mola larvae sunfish collections go for in museum and paint a clearer picture of the life cycle of these marine giants . Their accomplishment highlights the importance of museum collections and the persona they have to play in continuing research as emerging technology open up fresh opportunities for psychoanalysis .
