Ugly reef fish more likely to be on endangered list than its pretty cousins

By Jim Leffman via SWNS

Ugly reef fish are more likely to be on an endangered list than their pretty cousins a new study has revealed.

Researchers used machine learning to work out which fish appeared aesthetically most pleasing to us and also discovered that the plainer ones were also more likely to be fished.

The team from University of Montpellier, France asked 13,000 members of the public to rate the aesthetic attractiveness of 481 photographs of ray-finned reef fish.

They then used the data to train a convolutional neural network before using it to look at another 4,400 photographs featuring 2,417 of the most encountered reef fish species.

Combining both sets they found that bright, colorful fish with rounder bodies tended to be rated as the most beautiful.

Species listed on the IUCN Red List as “Threatened” or whose conservation status has not yet been evaluated had lower aesthetic value to humans than species categorized as of least concern.

Unattractive species were also of greater commercial interest to subsistence fishermen on reefs.

Study author Dr. Nicolas Mouquet said: "Aesthetic value represents one of the most
immediate and direct means by which human societies engage with biodiversity, and can be evaluated from species to ecosystems.

"Our study provides, for the first time, the aesthetic value of 2,417 reef fish species.

"We found that less beautiful fishes are the most ecologically and evolutionary distinct species and those recognized as threatened.

"Our study highlights likely important mismatches between potential public support for conservation and the species most in need of this support.”

The paper, published in the journal PLOS Biology, concluded that we prefer pretty fish because of the way the human brain processes colours and patterns.

However this may mean that the species most in need of public support are the least likely to receive it.

The ecological and evolutionary distinctiveness of unattractive fishes makes them important for the functioning of the whole reef and their loss could have a disproportionate impact on these high-biodiversity ecosystems.