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Some people were discussing blind cave fish having eyes not too long ago, so I thought I'd post this.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080107120911.htm
http://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/pfk/pages/item.php?news=1518

This cool new study found that by hybridizing between natural populations of the Blind Cave Fish from different locations, offspring can develop eyes. Basically it means that being eyeless has many different possible genes, but by hybridizing the fish, they make up for each others' lost genes and thus can see again.

Blind Cave Fish start forming eyes while the embryo is being formed, but eventually stop formation and degenerate. If you put the lens of a fish on the forming eye, the complete eye forms; this is how scientists have allowed blind cave fish to see in the past. Unlike this previous study, this current study doesn't need human intervention during development to trigger eye development.

Cool, eh?

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.

So if there are many independently-evolved populations of the Blind Cave Fish, wouldn't it make more sense to either assign species status to all of them or to group the entire complex with the Mexican Tetra again?

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I'm not your neighbor, you Bakersfield trash.

Taxonomists have no use for this so-called "sense".

So if there are many independently-evolved populations of the Blind Cave Fish, wouldn't it make more sense to either assign species status to all of them or to group the entire complex with the Mexican Tetra again?

This paper actually classifies them as Astyanax mexicanus. I would think that scientists will probably go for the latter, as the former seems like it would be unnecessary, if not rather troublesome. I'm not sure if there are actually any great phenotypic differences between the different populations of fish either, which would make naming each population as a species to be rather difficult as each species would be difficult to identify, at least without genetic information.

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The aquarist is one who must learn the ways of the biologist, the chemist, and the veterinarian.