Florida fish

Florida fish
	Florida fish ( Lepisosteus platyrhincus )
Systematics
Subclass :	Bone organoids (holostei)
	Ginglymodes
Order :	Lepisosteiformes
Family :	Bake fish (Lepisosteidae)
Genre :	Lepisosteus
Type :	Florida fish
Scientific name
	Lepisosteus platyrhincus
	DeKay , 1842

Florida bonefoot skull

The Florida Gar ( Lepisosteus platyrhincus ) is a species from the family of billfish (Lepisosteidae). The species occurs in freshwater Florida as well as in the catchment areas of the Savannah River and the Ochlockonee River and in coastal waters around Florida.

features

The Florida bonefish, like all bonefish, has an approximately cylindrical body armored with ganoid scales , jaws elongated to a snout, a dorsal and anal fin set far back, and pectoral and pelvic fins set deep on the body . The species reaches a maximum length of about 1.30 meters and a maximum weight of 9.6 kg. The snout is about five to ten times as long as it is wide and generally longer in females. These also grow larger than the males. The coloring is variable. The body is mostly olive brown to dark brown on the back, becomes lighter towards the flanks to the whitish belly. The body has a series of dark spots that are round in the long-snouted individuals and irregular or bar-shaped in the short-snouted individuals. The unpaired fins are also spotted, while the paired pectoral and ventral fins are often dark in color. The dorsal and anal fins show seven to eight soft rays, the pectoral fins nine to eleven, the ventral fins six and the heterocercal caudal fin 12 to 13. The gill trap is 19 to 33, usually 25. There are 54 to 59 ganoid scales along the side.

The species differs from the common bone pike ( Lepisosteus osseus ) by its significantly shorter snout, from the spotted bone pike ( Lepisosteus oculatus ) by the lack of bony plates on the belly side.

Way of life

The Florida fish prefer slow-flowing lowland waters with sandy or muddy bottoms and vegetation. In summer, the animals can often be driven directly to the surface of the water, in winter they withdraw to deeper regions. When the oxygen content of the water is low , they use the swim bladder as a respiratory organ. Adult animals feed on fish and crustaceans, which are mainly hunted at night but also during the day in groups of two to ten animals.

Spawning is laid on aquatic plants from March to September. The larvae attach themselves to aquatic plants or other structures with a suction cup at the tip of the snout until the yolk supply is used up. Depending on their size, young animals feed on zooplankton , insects or small fish.

Web links

Commons : Lepisosteus platyrhincus - collection of images, videos and audio files

Lepisosteus platyrhincus inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Posted by: NatureServe, 2012. Retrieved February 10, 2014.

Individual evidence

↑ Florida fish on Fishbase.org (English)
↑ ^a ^b ^c Barton C. Marcy, Dean E. Fletcher, F. Douglas Martin: Fishes of the Middle Savannah River Basin: with emphasis on the Savannah River site . University of Georgia Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8203-2535-4 , pp. 78-80 .
^ The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Volume 2: Bony fishes part 1 (Acipenseridae to Grammatidae) . In: KE Carpenter (Ed.): FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes and American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Special Publication . tape 5 . FAO, Rome 2002, p. 676 ( full text [PDF]).

[1] Florida fish on Fishbase.org (English)

[Savannah-2] Barton C. Marcy, Dean E. Fletcher, F. Douglas Martin: Fishes of the Middle Savannah River Basin: with emphasis on the Savannah River site . University of Georgia Press, 2005, ISBN 978-0-8203-2535-4 , pp. 78-80 .

[3] The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Volume 2: Bony fishes part 1 (Acipenseridae to Grammatidae) . In: KE Carpenter (Ed.): FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes and American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Special Publication . tape 5 . FAO, Rome 2002, p. 676 ( full text [PDF]).