Flag butterflyfish
| Flag butterflyfish | ||||||||||||
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Flagged butterflyfish ( Chaetodon auriga setifer ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Chaetodon auriga | ||||||||||||
| Forsskål , 1775 |
The flagged butterflyfish ( Chaetodon auriga ) is a species from the butterflyfish family .
The flagged butterflyfish reach a length of 18 to 20 centimeters. It lives at depths of 1 to 10 meters in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific from the coast of East Africa to the Marquesas .
The fish has a high-backed, laterally flattened body. As is typical for many butterfly fish, the flag butterfly fish also has a conspicuous, black eye spot in the rear area of the dorsal fin . 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. A black stripe camouflages the eye. The pennant butterflyfish from the Red Sea lack the eye spot. It is described by some scientists as a separate subspecies Chaetodon auriga auriga . The animals from the Indo-Pacific are then the subspecies Chaetodon auriga setifer .
Flagged butterfly fish feed on the polyps of hard and soft corals , bristle worms , algae , small crustaceans and snails .
literature
- Gerald R. Allen : Butterfly and Angelfish. Volume 2, Mergus Verlag, 1979, 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
- Flagged butterflyfish on Fishbase.org (English)
- Chaetodon auriga inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: Myers, R. & Pratchett, M., 2009. Retrieved February 9, 2014.