Wolffish (family)

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Wolffish
Wolffish (Cobitis taenia)

Wolffish ( Cobitis taenia )

Systematics
Cohort : Otomorpha
Sub-cohort : Ostariophysi
without rank: Otophysa
Order : Carp-like (Cypriniformes)
Subordination : Loach- like (Cobitoidei)
Family : Wolffish
Scientific name
Cobitidae
Swainson , 1839

Loaches , loaches in the narrower sense , or thorn gobies (Cobitidae), are bottom-living freshwater fish from the order of the carp-like (Cypriniformes). They are small to medium-sized, spindle-shaped to elongated fish. All wolffish live in the Old World , Europe , Asia and two isolated locations in North Africa.

In Germany there are four species of wolffish, the European mud whip ( Misgurnus fossilis ), which lives mainly in small, nutrient-rich lakes and ponds, and the wolffish ( Cobitis taenia ), which occurs mainly in running waters, as well as the Danube stone- biter ( Cobitis elongatoides ), which occurs in the Saxon Elbe river basin and the Baltic gold loin ( Sabanejewia baltica ), which reaches the western limit of its distribution area with the Oder .

features

Head and mouth of the European mud whip ( Misgurnus fossilis )

Wolffish are 4.5 to 56 cm long, depending on the species. Their body is cylindrical, elongated and, in contrast to the laterally flattened trunk of the loach, round in cross-section. They have three to six pairs of barbels , including a pair of rostral barbels , which can rarely be missing. The mouth is below. The lateral line organ on the head is inconspicuous, the caudal fin is usually rounded or only slightly indented, forked only in Acantopsis and some Lepidocephalichthys . The pharyngealia is covered with a row of teeth. In a skin pocket under each eye there is a thorn that can be folded out by muscle movements and locked with a bone joint. Loewas feed on small, ground-dwelling, invertebrate animals. Some of them also eat plant-based foods.

distribution

The fish live all over Europe , with the exception of the north of Scandinavia , the islands in the Mediterranean Sea and the Peloponnese , all of Asia with the exception of the Arabian Peninsula , the extreme north of Siberia between the confluence of the Ob and the Lena , the Chukchi peninsula , Kamchatka , the Philippines , Hainans , Sulawesis and the area east of the Wallace Line . In Africa there is an isolated occurrence in northern Morocco , as well as in Ethiopia . In the Balkans , some new species have only recently been discovered that are endemic to very small areas.

External system

The loaches are a family of loach-like , one of the two superfamilies of the carp-like. In the past, the clown loaches (Botiidae) and the longfin loaches ( Vaillantella ) were also counted among the loaches. Recently, however, based on molecular genetic studies, these have been regarded as an independent family, so that only the genera and species of the former subfamily Cobitinae remain among the wolffish. The wolffish are the sister group of a common clade of fin suckers (Balitoridae), Ellopostomatidae and brook loaches (Nemacheilidae). The loaches have a more basal position.

Thorn eyes ( Pangio sp.)

The position of the wolffish shows the following cladogram (after Bohlen & Šlechtová, 2009, and Chen et al., 2009):

  Carp-like (Cypriniformes)  

 ? Suckers (Catostomidae)


   

 Loaches  sensu lato  (Cobitoidea)  

 ? Suckers (Catostomidae)


   

 Sucking Loaches (Gyrinocheilidae)


   

 Clown loaches (Botiidae)


   

 Longfin loaches (Vaillantellidae)


   

 Loaches or loaches sensu stricto (Cobitidae)


   

 Fin Sucker (Balitoridae)


   

 "Malfunctioning mouths"  (Ellopostomatidae)


   

 Brook loaches (Nemacheilidae)










   

 Carp fish (Cyprinoidea)




Template: Klade / Maintenance / Style

Internal system

Acantopsis choirorhynchos
Niwaella delicata
Sabanejewia aurata

Examination of both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA supports the family monophyly .

literature

  • Jörg Bohlen, Vendula Šlechtová: Phylogenetic position of the fish genus Ellopostoma (Teleostei: Cypriniformes) using molecular genetic data. Ichthyological Exploration of Freshwaters. Vol. 20, No. 2, 2009, pp. 157–162 ( PDF ; 1.8 MB)
  • Wei-Jen Chen, V. Lheknim, Richard L. Mayden: Molecular phylogeny of the Cobitoidea (Teleostei: Cypriniformes) revisited: position of enigmatic loach Ellopostoma resolved with six nuclear genes. Journal of Fish Biology. Vol. 75, No. 9, 2009 pp. 2197-2208, doi : 10.1111 / j.1095-8649.2009.02398.x
  • Maurice Kottelat : Conspectus cobitidum: an inventory of the loaches of the world (Teleostei: Cypriniformes: Cobitoidei) . The Raffles Bulletin of Zoology, Supplementum No. 26, 2012, 199 pp. ( PDF ; 5.4 MB)
  • Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. 4th edition. John Wiley & Sons, Hoboken NJ et al. 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .

Web links

Commons : wolffish (Cobitidae)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jörg Bohlen, Jörg Freyhof, Christian Wolter: First records of Cobitis elongatoides and Sabanejewia baltica (Cobitidae) for Germany. Cybium. Vol. 29, No. 1, 2005, pp. 103-104 ( PDF , 1 MB)
  2. ^ Peter S. Maitland, Keith Linsel: Freshwater fish. Kosmos, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-440-10962-5