Do you ever
wonder if there's something we could do to make sure an animal
I'm Daniela Calcagnotto, and that's
exactly what I'm trying to figure out.
I study a
species of fish called the pacu. These fish are close vegetarian relatives
of the meat-eating piranha. They are found in several rivers
in South America. They can grow to be as heavy as a human
kid - that's about 50 pounds! The
pacu is very important to
the economy of many communities. Recently the wild populations
have been overfished and their numbers are decreasing.
government approved a project to study the pacu populations
to see how the fish vary from river to river. As a first
step, I took little pieces of fin from various fish and
Now, I am comparing the DNA to see how genetically
different, or diverse, the populations are. Scientists need
this information to breed fish in fish farms. They want
the farm populations to have the same genetic diversity as
the wild populations. If the fish become endangered, we
can then help the populations grow again. We can gradually
move the fish from the breeding place to the rivers.