Atherion
| Atherion | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Atherionidae | ||||||||||||
| Schultz , 1948 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Atherion | ||||||||||||
| Jordan & Starks , 1901 |
Atherion is a genus of very small earfish that live from South Africa to India and from southern Japan to Australia and the Fiji Islands in the coastal sea. They also occur over coral reefs just below the surface of the water, less often in tidal pools.
features
Atherion species grow to be 2 to 6 inches long. They are elongated, slender, and silvery in color. Unmistakable characteristics of the genus are small fields of thorns, which are on the outside of the mouth and in some places on the head. The base of the first, small dorsal fin lies behind the tips of the pectoral fins. It is supported by three to six fin spines, the second, larger dorsal fin has a fin spine and 8 to 13 soft rays, the anal fin has a spine and 13 to 17 soft rays. There are 40 to 44 scales along the sidelines .
Atherion are occasionally used as bait fish or as food fish for larger fish in aquaculture. Little is known about their way of life, diet and reproduction. The eggs should be relatively large.
Systematics
The genus belonged within the Old World earfish (Atherinidae) of the subfamily Atherinomorinae. A study from 2015, which was carried out using a comparative genetic analysis , however, comes to the conclusion that Atherion is the sister group of the rainbow fish (Melanotaeniidae) and assigns them to the monotypic family Atherionidae, which was established in 1948.
There are three types described:
- Atherion africanum Smith, 1965
- Atherion elymus Jordan & Starks, 1901
- Atherion maccullochi Jordan & Hubbs, 1919
literature
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. Wiley, New York 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7
- Harro Hieronimus: Rainbow Fish and Kindred Families . Aqualog, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2002, ISBN 3-931702-80-4 , p. 10 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Daniela Campanella, Lily C. Hughes, Peter J. Unmack, Devin D. Bloom, Kyle R. Piller, Guillermo Ortí: Multi-locus fossil-calibrated phylogeny of Atheriniformes (Teleostei, Ovalentaria). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, March 2015, DOI: 10.1016 / j.ympev.2015.03.001 .
Web links
- Atherion on Fishbase.org (English)