Prof’s niche is odd fish

Sometimes it takes time to describe something new, especially when you get to pick the new name.....

Prof’s niche is odd fish
Meet MU’s ‘ratfish lady’

By Madelyn Pennino
Intelligencer Journal

Published: Jan 04, 2007

MILLERSVILLE, Pa. - The counters in Dominique Dagit’s laboratory are lined with plastic containers holding preserved fish that have yet to be given scientific names.

The fish are ratfish — an ancient relative to sharks — and it’s the Millersville University biology professor’s task to give each a moniker.

Dagit, who calls herself the “ratfish lady,” has written about 15 articles on ratfish for various publications, and she’s attended numerous conferences, where she met people who have discovered new species of the fish or are seeking information about it.

A 1992 graduate of University of Massachusetts at Amherst with a doctorate in zoology, she has made a name for herself among other ratfish experts. And those experts frequently come to her for help in deciding if a new species has been discovered.

Oftentimes, Dagit will work with those colleagues to name the newly found species.

Most recently, she was one of several scientists involved in the naming of a new type of ratfish. She chose Hydrolagus mccoskeri after John McCosker, a friend and colleague from California Academy of Sciences who — on his birthday in 1995 — found the species in the Pacific Ocean near the Galapagos Islands. McCosker asked Dagit for her help in the naming process.

To date, Dagit has named five other species of ratfish. She said the process is exciting.

“It’s like immortality,” she said. “Your name is associated with it forever.”

See http://local.lancasteronline.com/4/29192 for the rest of the entry.

Craig Heinselman
Peterborough, NH