American pike
| American pike | ||||||||||||
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Redfin pike ( E. a. Americanus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Esox americanus | ||||||||||||
| Gmelin , 1789 |
The American pike ( Esox americanus ) is a species of pike that occurs in two subspecies in eastern and central North America. The redfin pike ( E. a. Americanus ) lives in the basin of the St. Lawrence River and in the eastern United States to Georgia and Florida . The second subspecies, the grass pike ( E. a. Vermiculatus ) occurs in the Great Lakes , in southern Ontario , in Michigan , Wisconsin and Nebraska and in the Mississippi river basin . In the south on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico , the range of the two subspecies is separated by the Pascagoula River in Mississippi . The redfin pike lives east of it, while the grass pike is common west of the Pascagoula River to the Brazos River in Texas .
features
The American pike usually stays under 40 cm in length. The body is slender, cylindrical and almost round in cross section. The top of the large head is bare and flattened; the snout, which is relatively short for pikes, is spade-shaped, broad and has a slightly concave top. The mouth is almost horizontal, the lower jaw protrudes. The teeth in the front part of the lower jaw and some on the sides are enlarged. The head sides and the gill cover are fully scaled. The gill rakes are reduced to small, sharp teeth.
- Fin formula : dorsal 13–21, anal 13–18.
American pike are olive to black on their back, the belly is amber to whitish and sometimes dark marbled. The pupil is yellow to yellow-green, the iris is golden. An inconspicuous band, which is light in red-fin pike and rust-brown in grass pike, extends from the neck to the beginning of the dorsal fin. Vertical, wavy, olive to black bands pattern the sides of the body. In the redfin pike there are 20 to 36 bands and the light areas between the bands are narrower than the bands. In the case of grass pike there are only 15 to 23 bands and the light areas in between are wider. The redfin pike has a strongly pigmented lower jaw on the sides. The dorsal fin is dark, the other fins are reddish. The lower jaw of the grass pike is only weakly pigmented. The dorsal fin is dark, the leading edges of the remaining fins are black. Otherwise, its fins are dark to amber in color.
Way of life
American pike live in plant populations in lakes, swamps, oxbow lakes, and low-current areas of small to medium-sized rivers. Like all pike, the American pike is a predatory fish.
literature
- Roger Tory Peterson, Lawrence M. Page, Mariner Books: A Field Guide to Freshwater Fishes: North America North of Mexico. Mariner Books, 1998, ISBN 0-3959-1091-9
Web links
- American pike on Fishbase.org (English)
- Esox americanus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: NatureServe, 2011. Retrieved September 27, 2013.