Eastern mosquito fish
| Eastern mosquito fish | ||||||||||||
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Gambusia holbrooki , female, above the smaller male, in a photo cuvette . |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gambusia holbrooki | ||||||||||||
| Girard , 1859 |
The Eastern mosquito fish ( Gambusia holbrooki ), also called Kobold-Kärpfling , Texas-Kärpfling and Silber-Kärpfling , is a species of fish from the subfamily of the viviparous toothcarps (Poeciliinae). It is found in the eastern United States from New Jersey to Alabama and was introduced by humans to southern Europe and many other subtropical and tropical countries for mosquito control. Gambusia holbrooki was named after the American naturalist John Edwards Holbrook , the German name delimits the species from the western mosquito fish ( Gambusia affinis ), whose distribution area adjoins to the west and extends from southern Alabama to the Río Pánuco in Mexico.
features
Females reach a length of 4 to 8 cm, males remain smaller at 3 to 3.5 cm. In contrast to that of Gambusia affinis, the male gonopodium has three teeth. Most of the fish are monochrome gray, strongly piebald males occur only rarely, especially in Florida. The gestation mark of the females is more clearly visible than in Gambusia affinis .
- Fin formula : dorsal I / 7, anal 1/9.
Way of life
The Eastern mosquito fish lives mainly in stagnant or slowly flowing waters with dense vegetation, especially in tributaries and oxbow lakes of rivers, in lakes and ponds and also goes in brackish water . It has a high temperature tolerance and can withstand temperatures from 30 ° C to almost freezing point, but prefers high temperatures. It feeds mainly on mosquito larvae .
literature
- Page, LM & BM Burr, 1991. A field guide to freshwater fishes of North America north of Mexico. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. ISBN 978-0395910917 .
- Dieter Gentzsch: Gambusia holbrooki. In: Claus Schaefer, Torsten Schröer (Hrsg.): The large lexicon of aquaristics. 2 volumes. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-7497-9 , p. 393.
Web links
- Gambusia holbrooki on Fishbase.org (English)
- Gambusia holbrooki inthe IUCN 2013 Red List of Threatened Species . Listed by: NatureServe, 2012. Retrieved January 11, 2014.