Search Here

A 13-year-old girl's project for her school's science fair is making waves among academics studying the invasive lionfish that infest many U.S. waters.

The experiment of Lauren Arrington who just graduated from sixth grade, was replicated and confirmed by Craig Layman, an ecology professor at North Carolina State University, in a new study.

For the project, Arrington decided to study the lionfish. The creature is a magnificent, outfitted with an elaborate structure equipping a poisonous spine and outrageous striped coloring. However, it doesn't belong here.

Arrington sought to determine how far up coastal rivers the lionfishes might travel, so she tested it's tolerance for desalinized water.

"Scientists were doing plenty of tests on them, but they just always assumed they were in the ocean," Arrington told NPR. "So I was like, 'Well, hey guys, what about the river?'"

Her experiment found that lionfish would stand a salinity 6 parts per 1000 and the fish still thrived. The findings are major news for conservationists as it suggests even more waters could be invaded by the aggressive species.

The study has been published in the journal Environmental Biology of Fish where Lauren also got a shout-out in the acknowledgments section.