Milyeringa justitia
Barrow Island Cave Gudgeon
Species Summary
The third species of blind gudgeon to be formally named, Milyeringa justitia was described in 2013 and is restricted entirely to the groundwater aquifers of Barrow Island, a roughly 234 km² island some 56 km off the Pilbara coast of Western Australia that was joined to the mainland until sea levels rose around 8,000–10,000 years ago. Though a close relative of the better-known Milyeringa veritas of the nearby Cape Range mainland, genetic data show it to be a distinct and distant lineage, isolated in its own island aquifer system since that land bridge was severed.
Distribution & Habitat
Milyeringa justitia lives in the anchialine groundwater beneath Barrow Island, a freshwater lens floating over deeper saline groundwater, first encountered in wells and bores sunk on the island. It shares this hidden habitat with other troglobitic and stygobitic fauna found nowhere else, including the endemic shrimp Stygiocaris stylifera and a possibly cave-adapted population of the blind snake Ramphotyphlops longissimus. Barrow Island has been an active oil exploration site since the 1960s and, more recently, host to the Gorgon gas project, one of Australia’s largest resource developments — placing a fish found nowhere else on Earth in direct proximity to major industrial infrastructure, and making protection of the island’s groundwater quality a genuine conservation concern.
Compiled for Home of the Rainbowfish from ANGFA sources: Anonymous, “Information from the Journals: A New Species of the Blind Cave Gudgeon Milyeringa… from Barrow Island”, In-Stream 22, 2013, p. 22; Anonymous, “Milyeringa justitia - Barrow Island Cave Gudgeon”, In-Stream 22, 2013, pp. 23–24 (summarising H. K. Larson, R. Foster, W. F. Humphreys & M. I. Stevens, “A new species of the blind cave gudgeon Milyeringa (Pisces: Gobioidei: Eleotridae) from Barrow Island, Western Australia, with a redescription of M. veritas Whitley”, Zootaxa 3616, 2013, pp. 135–150).