Nature Communications (Sep 2019)

Unexpected species diversity in electric eels with a description of the strongest living bioelectricity generator

  • C. David de Santana,
  • William G. R. Crampton,
  • Casey B. Dillman,
  • Renata G. Frederico,
  • Mark H. Sabaj,
  • Raphaël Covain,
  • Jonathan Ready,
  • Jansen Zuanon,
  • Renildo R. de Oliveira,
  • Raimundo N. Mendes-Júnior,
  • Douglas A. Bastos,
  • Tulio F. Teixeira,
  • Jan Mol,
  • Willian Ohara,
  • Natália Castro e Castro,
  • Luiz A. Peixoto,
  • Cleusa Nagamachi,
  • Leandro Sousa,
  • Luciano F. A. Montag,
  • Frank Ribeiro,
  • Joseph C. Waddell,
  • Nivaldo M. Piorsky,
  • Richard P. Vari,
  • Wolmar B. Wosiacki

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11690-z
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

Read online

A single species of electric eel, Electrophorus electricus, has been described. Here, de Santana et al. show that there are three major lineages of Electrophorus distributed across Greater Amazonia and describe two new species, one with a much stronger electric discharge than was previously known.