Yellow-spotted moray eel
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Yellow-spotted moray ( Gymnothorax flavimarginatus ) |
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| Gymnothorax flavimarginatus | ||||||||||||
| ( Rüppel , 1830) |
The yellow-spotted , yellow - headed moray or soot-head moray ( Gymnothorax flavimarginatus ) lives in the Red Sea and the tropical Indo-Pacific from South Africa to the Tuamotu Archipelago and the Austral Islands , north to the Ryūkyū Islands and Hawaii and south to New Caledonia . It is common in the Maldives and the most common in Hawaii. In the eastern Pacific they occur on the Pacific coast of Costa Rica and Panama and in the Galapagos Islands . It inhabits mainly coral-rich lagoons, reef roofs, outer and rock reefs at depths of up to 150 meters.
In some regions of the Indo-Pacific it is caught as food fish. However, it can contain the fish poison ciguatera .
features
The yellow-spotted moray is 1.2 meters long. Their color is yellowish, with a multitude of small, brownish speckles. The mouth is dark gray to purple (soot-head moray), the eye golden yellow, the gill opening black. The edge of the rear fin hem is bright yellow or green. Young fish also often show a bright yellow with brown spots. Yellow-spotted morays have 129 to 137 vertebrae .
It is strongly built and can therefore easily be confused with the giant moray ( Gymnothorax javanicus ).
Way of life
Yellow-spotted morays are usually solitary animals. Occasionally they live in their hideaway with conspecifics or other moray eels. They are mainly nocturnal, but also swim around freely in the morning and evening. Fish, cephalopods and crustaceans are among their prey. The reproductive biology of the yellow-spotted moray is unknown.
literature
- Hans A. Baensch , Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (Non-Perciformes) , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X
- Dieter Eichler, Robert F. Myers: Korallenfische Zentraler Indopazifik , Jahr-Verlag GmbH & Co., 1997, ISBN 3-86132-225-0
- Ewald Lieske, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish of the world , 1994, year publisher, ISBN 3-86132-112-2
- Marco Lichtenberger: Moray eels in the seawater aquarium. Natur und Tier Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86659-081-6
Web links
- Yellow-spotted moray eel on Fishbase.org (English)