Tuesday July 23, 2024
News-Press —
Step aside, Florida man. We now have an official Florida bass.
The largemouth bass in most of Florida, the state’s most popular freshwater game fish, has officially been declared a separate species from other largemouth bass, according to a release last week from the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.
In 2022, researchers at Yale University used advanced genetic analysis to determine that Florida bass are not only “a distinct species” but are also spread further than expected into parts of Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The American Fisheries Society has now established it as a separate species.
The previous scientific name for largemouth bass, Micropterus salmoides, is now the name for Florida bass. Largemouth bass are now Micropterus nigricans.