Brown spotted porcupine fish
| Brown spotted porcupine fish | ||||||||||||
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Brown-spotted porcupinefish ( Diodon holocanthus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Diodon holocanthus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The brown-spotted porcupine fish ( Diodon holocanthus ) occurs circumtropically both in the Indo-Pacific and in the tropical and subtropical Atlantic . In the western Atlantic, its distribution area extends from Canada via Bermuda to the coast of Brazil . In the eastern Atlantic, it is found between 30 degrees north latitude and 23 ° south latitude and the coast of South Africa . It also occurs in the southern Red Sea and in the Indian Ocean near Madagascar , Mauritius and Réunion . In the Pacific he lives from southern Japan to Lord Howe Island and Hawaii , on the Pacific coast of America from southern California to Columbia and Easter Island .
features
Brown-spot porcupine fish grow to be half a meter long. They differ from the similar masked porcupine fish ( Diodon liturosus ) by their brown transverse bands and four black spots on their back. The first transverse band runs across the forehead from one eye to the other. In the Atlantic population, the spots are not very clearly developed. Instead, they have a large number of black polka dots. The fins of the young pelagic fish also have spots, those of the ancients are spotless. They usually have long, sharp spines turned backwards. Only when they inflate do the spines stand up. The spines have three-part roots. Between the snout and the beginning of the dorsal fin they have 14 to 16 spines. The teeth in the upper and lower jaw have grown together without any visible transition.
Fin formula : dorsal 13–15, anal 13–15
Way of life
Brown-spotted porcupine fish are nocturnal and live solitary over coastal reefs, rock bottoms or soft bottoms in very shallow water up to a depth of 15 meters. Young fish up to a length of six to nine centimeters live pelagically or stay under floating Sargassum rods and also form small groups. Brown-spotted porcupine fish feed on hard-shelled invertebrates such as snails , mussels , sea urchins , crabs and hermit crabs . They are bad swimmers.
literature
- Baensch, Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (non-perch-like) . Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X
- Ewald Lieske, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish of the world . Year Top Special Verlag Hamburg, ISBN 3-86132-112-2
- Dieter Eichler, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish Indo-Pacific . Jahr-Verlag GmbG & Co., ISBN 3-86132-225-0
annotation
- ↑ holocanthus would be correct to write holacanthus : "whole sting"; s. Holacanthus .
Web links
- Brown spotted porcupine fish on Fishbase.org (English)