In the summer of 2022, Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo, a researcher with the Australian Rivers Institute at Griffith University, wasn’t primarily searching for interesting fish species. Instead, he was investigating the effects of 2019-2020 bushfires in K’gari (formerly Fraser Island), the world’s largest sand island, which is located of Australia’s east coast, about 150 miles north of Brisbane.
Although Carpenter-Bundhoo wasn’t fishing for lampreys, he managed quite a catch — an Australian brook lamprey (Mordacia praecox) living about 600 miles from its known habitat.
The endangered species is especially unusual because it is part of a paired species — meaning that it has a relative with some physical differences that is genetically similar. Its closest cousin, the short-headed lamprey (Mordacia mordax), attaches to its prey with a ring of sharp teeth, then sucks its blood. M. praecox, which is nearly indistinguishable from M. mordax, dines by straining water through a filter in its mouth.
