Woman fish
| Woman fish | ||||||||||||
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Female fish ( Elops sp. ) In the Aquarium of the Americas . |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name of the family | ||||||||||||
| Elopidae | ||||||||||||
| Bleeker , 1852 | ||||||||||||
| Scientific name of the genus | ||||||||||||
| Elops | ||||||||||||
| Linnaeus , 1766 |
The elopidae (Elopidae, Elops ) are a primitive, since the lower Cretaceous existing family of the genuine bony fish (Teleostei). There is only one recent genus with seven species .
They live in tropical and subtropical regions of the Atlantic and Pacific and also migrate to the brackish water zone and the lower reaches of the rivers. Woman fish spawn in the sea. The Leptocephali and the juvenile fish live in mangroves and salt marshes .
features
Their body is slender, spindle-shaped, oval in cross-section and slightly flattened on the sides. The scales are cycloid . The eyes are large and protected by fat eyelids . The mouth is large and terminal, the gill openings wide. The maxillary margin is formed by the premaxillary and the dentate maxillary . The lower jaw extends to the rear end of the eye, between its two branches lies a gulare, a bony throat plate. The pelvic fins are ventral and lie behind the beginning of the dorsal fin. Dorsal and anal fins can be hidden in scaly sheaths. The caudal fin is deeply forked. She has seven hypuralia . Postcleithra and mesocoracoid (bones in the shoulder girdle) are present. The number of Branchiostegal rays is 27 to 35, that of the vertebrae 63 to 79. The pseudobranch is large.
- Fin formula : dorsal 20–25, anal 13–18, ventral 12–16.
- Scale formula : SL 95–120.
Female fish are 90 centimeters to 1.10 meters long. They are predatory fish and live on plankton , small fish and crabs. They are popular frogfish. Their transparent leptocephali are small, reach a maximum length of 5 cm, and have a well-developed, forked caudal fin and a rear dorsal fin. The number of their muscle sections (segments) in the trunk muscles is 53 to 86.
species
- Pacific womanfish ( E. affinis ) Regan, 1909
- Hawaiian womanfish ( E. hawaiensis ) Regan, 1909
- West African womanfish ( E. lacerta ) Valenciennes in Cuvier & Valenciennes, 1847
- Indian womanfish ( E. machnata ) (Forsskål, 1775)
- Elops saurus Linnaeus, 1766
- Senegalese womanfish ( E. senegalensis ) Regan, 1909
- Elops smithi McBride, CR Rocha, Ruiz-Carus & Bowen, 2010
literature
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World . John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7
- Karl Albert Frickhinger: Fossils Atlas Fish , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1999, ISBN 3-88244-018-X
Web links
- Women fish on Fishbase.org (English)