"Fish researchers (a.k.a. fish freaks) like to explain, to the bemused bystander, how fish have evolved an astonishing array of adaptations; so much so that it can be difficult for such researchers to comprehend why anyone would study anything else."
Tony J. Pitcher
My interest in the finned creatures tracks back to my childhood growing up on the Brazilian Northeast coast. At that time, a Jangada fishing boat mooring on the sandy beaches of Tibau would easily capture my attention for hours. In that desert-like landscape, there was nothing more interesting than a fisherman's basket. Hairtails, tarpons, robalos, lookdowns, and pompanos were among the frequent catches—all this diversity of finned creatures fascinated me and subconsciously drove my professional career.
Soon enough, I saw myself funded by the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) to study marine fishes' chromosomal evolution at the Universidad Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN). Together with Dr. Wagner Molina, I took my first steps as a young scientist. Dr. Molina provided me with all the tools I needed to lead my own research project. This fantastic opportunity allowed me to experience producing and communicating science early in my undergraduate studies. My first scientific paper was an outcome of this experience: a study which reported that remarkable differences in the chromosomal configurations may work as a post-zygotic barrier in two sympatric species of silversides common to the Brazilian coast. Here I was once more, exploring the same sandy beaches I grew up in. Still, this time as a fledgling scientist asking himself about the processes responsible for the great diversity of fishes that have always fascinated me.
Nevertheless, I couldn't deny the Amazon coursing through my veins. My father, an authentic Amazonian native, loved impressing me with stories about how a peacock bass took care of its brood inside its mouth or how effective rotten eggs are when attempting to hook silver arowanas skimming the surface. I needed to learn more, so I decided to follow my father's footsteps and study the Amazonian fish fauna during my Master's. At Dr. Tomas Hrbek's Lab, I had the opportunity to develop a conservation study that adverts to the large number of undescribed species endemic to two major tributaries of the Amazon river in Brazil—the Xingu and Tapajós rivers—which are under immediate threat from extensive hydroelectric dam development schemes. With Dr. Hrbek, I delved deeper into the concepts of systematics, biogeography, and microevolution, which helped me to continue building up a solid foundation for my evolutionary biology career.
During the period I spent in the Amazon, I was always ready to grab my hammock and fishing gear and join long field expeditions exploring rivers and creeks. Observing nature closely provided me with a broader perspective of both the ecological and evolutionary processes responsible for the astonishing diversity found in Neotropical Ostariophysan fishes today. Besides that, this was a prolific period in which I had the opportunity to collaborate with other young scientists in projects that added to the Amazonian fish fauna's knowledge and descriptions. When I joined Dr. Rupert Collins in an expedition to the Nhamundá river—a system never before visited by ichthyologists—we were stunned to find a weird, spiny, and armored catfish of a genus that had never been reported from the Amazon basin before (Pseudolithoxus). We described this new species, Pseudolithoxus kinja, with "kinja" meaning "true people" in reverence to how the Waimiri-Atroari indigenous people call themselves. This homage was meant to highlight these brave people who have survived attempted genocide and "civilization"/reeducation and nowadays thrive in a protected area that extends along the Uatumã river.
The ocean began calling me again, and I embraced what I like to call a "diadromous academic life," which took me to join Dr. Ricardo Betancur's team. Since then, we enrolled in a project that sought to investigate the role of habitat transitions in marine fish parallel radiations using macroevolution comparative methods. We aim to integrate genome-wide molecular data and the paleontological data to produce highly-resolved, time-calibrated phylogenetic trees for diverse perch-like fish groups. The estimated phylogeny will then be used to access the tempo and mode of evolution throughout the fish tree of life. In this macroevolutionary framework, we will be able to shine a light on questions such as: how some groups of fishes are so incredibly diverse while others are represented by only a few species, why some groups have evolved into a striking diversity of shapes and color while others remain so unchanged after millions of years that they are referred to as living fossils, how rates of diversification have been affected by events mass extinction, or how ecological opportunity arising from the occupation of new habitat or the origin of key innovations would trigger adaptive radiations.
Wherever the tides take me next, I'll happily find my niche...
