Predatory fish
| Predatory fish | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Parrot ( Orestias cuvieri ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Orestias cuvieri | ||||||||||||
| Valenciennes , 1846 |
The predatory fish ( Orestias cuvieri ), Spanish : Amanto , is a probably extinct freshwater fish from the genus of the Andean parrot ( Orestias ). It was endemic to Lake Titicaca .
description
At 22 centimeters, the carnivore was the largest representative of the Andean penguins. Other sources give 26.5 centimeters as the maximum length ( Day 1981, Beacham 1997 ). The adult fish were greenish-yellow to amber on top. The lower jaw was colored black and the fins were striped black. The scales were strikingly bright in the center. The boy's scales were stained. Its mouth was pointed almost upwards, giving the flat head a concave shape. The head length made up 40% of the total body length.
Way of life
The predatory fish usually lived in the cold zone of Lake Titicaca to a depth of 30 meters. Its diet consisted of zooplankton . In the cold season the fry migrated to the deep water zone.
die out
The Indians of Lake Titicaca often caught the carnivores during the seasonal migrations from the shallow to the deep water zone. In 1937 the American lake trout ( Salvelinus namaycush ) was released into Lake Titicaca. Due to the aggressive competition for food and living space, the Amantos' stocks decreased dramatically. The predatory fish was caught for the last time in 1937. An exact year of extinction is not known. Presumably it disappeared during the 1940s or 1950s due to competition with other introduced fish species, such as the rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ), the brown trout ( Salmo trutta fario ) or the La Plata earfish ( Odontesthes bonariensis ). A search in 1962 was unsuccessful.
With seven preserved specimens, the Naturalis Museum in Leiden has an impressive collection of this type.
literature
- David Day: The Doomsday Book of Animals . Ebury Press, London 1981, ISBN 0-670-27987-0 .
- Walton Beacham: World Wildlife Fund Guide to Extinct Species of Modern Times . 1997, ISBN 0-933833-40-7 .
- Wolfgang Villwock: Dangers for the endemic fish fauna through naturalization attempts and acclimatization of foreign fish using the example of Lake Titicaca (Peru / Bolivia) and Lake Lanao (Mindanao / Philippines) Negotiations of the International Limnology Association 18 (1227-1234) . 1972.
Web links
- Raubkärpfling on Fishbase.org (English)
- Orestias cuvieri in the endangered Red List species the IUCN 2006. Posted by: World Conservation Monitoring Center, 1996. Retrieved on 25 May. 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Lynne R. Parenti - A Taxonomic Revision of Andean Killifish Genus Orestias (Cyprinodontiformes, Cyprinodontidae) - PDF full text
- ↑ Naturalis - [Amanto - Driven out by Trout] → Extinct Animals → Fishes. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on February 26, 2017 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )