Brown dragon head
| Brown dragon head | ||||||||||||
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Brown scorpionfish ( Scorpaena porcus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Scorpaena porcus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The brown scorpionfish ( Scorpaena porcus ) is a fish from the scorpion fish family (Scorpaenidae). It lives in the Mediterranean , the Black Sea and the Eastern Atlantic , from the British Isles to Senegal , as well as the Canary Islands , Azores and Madeira .
features
The brown dragon head has a stocky, slightly high-backed body. The head, camouflaged with numerous skin flaps, and the gap in the mouth are large, the eyes large and set high. Above the eyes are large, divided tentacles that are as long as the diameter of the eye. Unlike many other scorpion fish, it has no tentacles on its chin. The dorsal fin is long and has an indentation between the front, hard-rayed and the rear, soft-rayed part. The color of the brown scorpionfish is usually brown or reddish brown and more or less piebald. In the rear part of the hard rayed part of the dorsal fin, a dark spot can appear between the 8th and 9th hard fin ray. The fish usually reach a length of 25 centimeters, they are a maximum of 37 centimeters long.
Way of life
The brown scorpionfish lives solitary mainly in rocky, often algae-covered habitats at depths of five to 800 meters, but also on sandy and muddy soils and in seagrass meadows . It feeds mainly on crabs , other crustaceans and other invertebrates . Small fish such as slimy fish , wrasse, and gobies make up only 24% of its diet. They spawn from July to September. The eggs measure 0.92 × 0.84 mm, the larvae that have just hatched are 1.72 mm in length.
literature
- Hans A. Baensch / Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (non-perch-like) . Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X .
- Matthias Bergbauer, Bernd Humberg: What lives in the Mediterranean? . Franckh-Kosmos Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-440-07733-0 .
Web links
- Brown Scorpionfish on Fishbase.org (English)