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b. Williams, Arizona, 18 October 1894;
d. La Jolla, California, 30 June 1979
Biographical
Background
Hubbs is one of the most respected American ichthyologists of all times.
He began his ichthyological work in 1915 working on a survey of fishes of
Bonneville Basin, Utah. The following year he graduated in Zoology
from Stanford University. In 1917 he received his M.A. in Zoology
also from and from that year until 1920 he was Assistant Curator of
Zoology in charge of fishes, amphibians and reptiles at the Field Museum
of Natural History (Chicago). He married Laura Clark in 1918.
From 1920 until 1944 he was Curator of Fishes at the University of
Michigan Museum of Zoology. In 1927 he received a PhD. from the
University of Michigan. He traveled extensively around the world;
one of those trips was a collecting expedition to Guatemala in 1934
sponsored by the University of Michigan and the Carnegie Institution of
Washington. In 1944 he was appointed Professor of Biology at the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California and in 1952
he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. From then one he
started to show interest in marine mammals and conservation issues. In
1964 Hubbs received the Joseph Leidy Award and Medal of the Academy of
Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. In 1977 The Carl and Laura Hubbs-Sea World
Research Institute was dedicated. His knowledge on freshwater fish
taxonomy was considered to be virtually encyclopedic.
Involvement
in Hypogean Fish Research
He received troglomorphic Astyanax fasciatus from
William Thorton Innes
in November 1936 and within a few weeks published a joint article with
Innes describing this fish from the characid family as a new genus and
species: Anoptichthys (eyeless fish) jordani (honoring Jordan). As Hubbs
himself put it, this was the ‘most surprising, by far subterranean fish
belonging to the family Characidae, of which no blind representative has
ever been seen before’ (Hubbs and Innes 1936, p. 1).
Hubbs’ surprise was manifold. First, it was most unusual to capture so many
individuals of a cave fish species in a single locality; the amblyopsids, by
that time the best known cave fish family, were not so abundant. Second,
the fact that all 75 individuals had arrived in the U.S. alive and were easily
kept in captivity said something about the potential of this species as a
research subject (Innes 1937). Third, this cave characin did not grossly
display the hyperdeveloped sensory organs quite common among other cave
animals. Basically, it only differed from its likely ancestor,
Astyanax
fasciatus, in lacking eyes and pigmentation. Yet, in line with the typological
thinking of the times, it was given a new generic and specific status. |
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This Mexican cave fish was so amusing that in both Mexico and the United
States a great deal of interest arose. A group of the Mexican Escuela Nacional de Ciencias Biologicas that included, among others
José Alvarez
(1903-1986) and Bibiano F. Osorio Tafall, began the exploration of the
whole cave system for the area which now has about 30 localities
containing this fish (Mitchell et al. 1977). As a matter of fact, two new
populations, in addition to the one in La Cueva Chica, were given new
specific names: Anoptichthys antrobius for the La Cueva El Pachón
population (Alvarez 1946) and A. hubbsi for the La Cueva de los Sabinos
population (Alvarez 1947). As more cave populations were discovered, it
became evident that this flow of specific names was leading nowhere and
that all the troglomorphic fish should be considered as a single species.
Hubbs’ hypogean cave research also comprised the Yucatán Peninsula.
Although there had been rumors of blind fishes from the cenotes (sink
holes) of Yucatan (Girard 1888, Eigenmann 1909), it was not until the 1930s
that organized scientific expeditions were carried out to explore this
unique subterranean habitat. There, Hubbs found a number of epigean fish
living in the cenotes, some of which showed certain degree of eye
reduction and depigmentation and erected new subspecies status for them.
But, more importantly, he also described two new troglomorphic species:
Ogilbia pearsei (=Typhlias pearsei) and
Ophisternon infernale (=Pluto
infernalis) in a monographic publication in which he also reviewed all known
information on cave fishes to that date (Hubbs 1938). |