Anemone goby
| Anemone goby | ||||||||||||
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Anemone goby ( Gobius bucchichi ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gobius bucchichi | ||||||||||||
| Steindachner , 1870 |
The anemone goby ( Gobius bucchichi ) is a small marine fish found in the eastern Atlantic on the southern coast of Portugal , in the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea .
features
The anemone goby becomes ten to twelve centimeters long. It is yellowish gray to gray in color and patterned with numerous dots and short lines that are arranged in longitudinal rows. The first of its two dorsal fins is supported by six hard rays. Their jaws are set with conical, backward curved teeth. The intestine is short and the swim bladder small.
Way of life
Anemone gobies live in very shallow water, usually no deeper than seven meters, at most up to a depth of 30 meters, on sandy, rocky and scree soils. Most often it is between three and seven meters water depth. Below ten meters it is replaced by the black goby ( Gobius niger ). They feed on small, invertebrates such as bristle worms, small crustaceans , especially flea and porcelain crustaceans , small molluscs and, as gastric examinations have shown, also consume algae (around 20% of the stomach's contents). The fish are diurnal and eat mainly in the morning hours.
Like the unrelated anemonefish ( Amphiprion ) from the coral reefs of the tropical Indo-Pacific , the anemone gobies live with sea anemones , in their case with the wax rose ( Anemonia sulcata ). The anemone gobies of the western Mediterranean are almost always found under the wax roses, in the eastern Mediterranean they only seek protection for the anemone when there is danger. The wax rose is the most stinging sea anemone species in the Mediterranean. The anemone goby is protected by its skin mucus from the nettle cells of the wax rose and only from their nettle cells and does not have to get used to the nettle cells through careful skin contact, as is the case with the anemonefish. The animals usually do not move further than 1.5 meters from their anemone and also sleep in it.
The community between anemone gobies and wax rose is not to be seen as a symbiosis , however , since the wax rose does not benefit from the community. The anemonefish, on the other hand, defend their symbiotic anemones against predators.
Reproduction
Anemone gobies spawn from April to June. Females differ from males by having a larger body size and shorter body length. Before mating, the males have fights for showmanship. They show two different behaviors. With frontal threats, they rise up on their pectoral fins lying on the seabed and try to lift themselves higher than their opponent. Then they open their mouths and snap at the rival. With the lateral threat they swim side by side, spread all their fins far away and try to push the opponent away. The winner snaps at the tail fin of the fugitive loser.
A male fertilizes the eggs of different females, which can lay between 1,000 and 10,000 eggs. The eggs are oval and 1.3 mm long. They adhere to the substrate with filaments attached to a pole. At a water temperature of 22 ° C, the larvae hatch after six days and are then 2 mm long. At first they live pelagically . After two months, the fry are one centimeter in length and, like their parent animals, live on or just above the sea floor and, in case of danger, flee into their anemone. They become sexually mature within a year at a length of 3 to 3.8 cm.
literature
- Matthias Bergbauer, Bernd Humberg: What lives in the Mediterranean? 1999, Franckh-Kosmos Verlag, ISBN 3-440-07733-0
- Wolfgang Pölzer: Anemonefish in the Mediterranean? Pages 60 to 62 in Koralle, saltwater aquaristic specialist magazine, No. 3, June / July 2000, Natur und Tier Verlag Münster, ISSN 1439-779X .
Web links
- Anemone goby on Fishbase.org (English)
- Gobius bucchichi inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.2. Posted by: Francour, P., Bilecenoglu, M., Bariche, M., Tunesi, L. & Goren, M., 2007. Retrieved February 9, 2014.