Four-eyed butterflyfish
| Four-eyed butterflyfish | ||||||||||||
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Four-eyed butterflyfish ( Chaetodon capistratus ) |
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| Chaetodon capistratus | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1758 |
The four-eyed butterflyfish ( Chaetodon capistratus ) or peacock butterflyfish is a species of the butterflyfish family .
The fish has a high-backed, laterally flattened body. As is typical for many butterfly fish, the peacock butterfly fish also has a conspicuous, white-fringed, black eye-spot on the base of the tail . This eye spot is an adaptation to optically oriented predators. When chasing their prey fish, predatory fish often focus on their eyes and are thus deceived as to their direction of flight. Young fish up to a length of three centimeters have an additional eye spot in the back of the dorsal fin and three vertical body stripes. A black stripe that fades in the adult animal camouflages the eye. The other two stripes are wider and more brown.
The four-eyed butterflyfish reach a length of up to 15 cm, but usually only stay 10 cm. It lives at depths of 1 to 20 meters in the Caribbean , the Gulf of Mexico and on the east coast of the United States , where it goes north to Massachusetts . It is the most common butterflyfish in the Caribbean and the West Indies. Juvenile animals live in small groups, adults almost always in pairs.
Four-eyed butterflyfish feed on algae, bristle worms , sea squirts , gorgonians and other corals.
literature
- Gerald R. Allen : Butterfly and Angelfish , Volume 2, 1979, Mergus Verlag, ISBN 3-88244-002-3
- Hans A. Baensch / Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X
Web links
- Four-eyed butterflyfish on Fishbase.org (English)
- Chaetodon capistratus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: Rocha, LA, 2010. Retrieved September 14, 2013.