Adontosternarchus
| Adontosternarchus | ||||||||||||
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Adontosternarchus balaenops |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Adontosternarchus | ||||||||||||
| Ellis in Eigenmann, 1912 |
Adontosternarchus ( Gr .: “a” = without, “odons” = teeth, “sternon” = breast, “archos” = anus) is a genus of South American freshwater fish from the order of the New World knife fish (Gymnotiformes). The genus occurs in the Amazon basin in northern Brazil and in the Orinoco river basin in Venezuela .
features
Adontosternarchus species grow to be 18 to 32 cm long. Typical for knife fish, they have elongated, laterally flattened bodies and an elongated anal fin , which has become the main driving organ. Ventral fins are absent, but there is a small caudal fin that is not connected to the anal fin . The back line is almost straight to slightly convex, the belly clearly convex up to the beginning of the anal fin. The head and eyes are small, the head round to the sides slightly flattened. The front nostrils lie between the tip of the snout and the front edge of the eye and run out in small tubes, the rear ones are not tubular and lie directly in front of or above the front edge of the eye. The mouth is terminal, the adult animals are toothless. The "chin" is bulbous, which can be more or less pronounced. The sideline is complete. The body and the base of the caudal fin are scaly, the head and a strip on the back are scaly. The fish have a gray-brown camouflage color.
species
Six species have been described so far:
- Adontosternarchus balaenops ( Cope , 1878) .
- Adontosternarchus clarkae Mago-Leccia, Lundberg & Baskin, 1985 .
- Adontosternarchus devenanzii Mago-Leccia, Lundberg & Baskin, 1985 .
- Adontosternarchus duartei de Santana & Vari, 2012 .
- Adontosternarchus nebulosus Lundberg & Fernandez, 2007 .
- Adontosternarchus sachsi ( Peters , 1877) . ( Type species )
literature
- Francisco Mago-Leccia, John G. Lundberg, Jonathan N. Baskin (1985): Systematics of the South American freshwater fish genus Adontosternarchus (Gymnotiformes, Apteronotidae). Contributions in Science (Los Angeles) No. 358, pages 1-19.
Web links
- Adontosternarchus on Fishbase.org (English)