A newly discovered colorful species of fish has been named after US President Barack Obama.
The fishes, which bear an array of different colours, were discovered in the river drainages of eastern North America by a group of scientists. The species belong to the family of freshwater fish called perch.
Among the five, one was named after Obama due to its his "global vision of environmental protection and conservation", a scientist said.
"We chose President Obama for his environmental leadership, particularly in the areas of clean energy and environmental protection, and because he is one of our first leaders to approach conservation and environmental protection from a more global vision," said Geosyntec Consultants researcher Steve Layman to The Guardian.
The fish named Etheostoma Obama bears skinny orange and blue colours and is dolled up by a fan-shaped fin. The other four species were named after three other presidents - Bill Clinton, Teddy Roosevelt, Jimmy Carter, and Vice-President Al Gore.
These names were chosen on the basis of their contribution to the environment - Bill Clinton for his wilderness preservation, Teddy Roosevelt for safeguarding wilderness for national monuments and parks, Jimmy Carter for his humanitarian work as wee as for his energy policies and Al Gore for his environmental campaigns and programs to raise awareness about global warming.
"We collected live breeding males (in the spring), photographed them, and took detailed colour notes throughout the range of E stigmaeum and the other species in the subgenus (Doration)," Layman was quoted as saying by the blog.
So far, around 200 species of darters have been identified in the country. Darters are the smallest member of the recently discovered perch family. The darters are called so because of their ability to zip around the bottom of rocks and waterways.
"What we found was those populations in the highland drainages of Tennessee, Kentucky and the Ozarks were quite different in colouration from the populations of E stigmaeum from Gulf coastal drainages and the lower Mississippi River basin," Layman said.
