Common fish
| Common fish | ||||||||||||
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Common fish ( Lepisosteus osseus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Lepisosteus osseus | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The common pike ( Lepisosteus osseus ) or long-snouted pike is a solitary predatory fish up to two meters long.
Appearance
The animals have the typical elongated shape of all shock robbers. The snout makes up more than two thirds, sometimes 80%, of the length of the head. Young fish and many adult fish wear a ribbon or a pattern of spots along the flanks. The dorsal and anal fins are located far back on the trunk and together with the heteroccal caudal fin form the drive organ.
distribution
He lives in the western United States from Wisconsin , Lake Erie and the Vermont Rivers to the Rio Grande and Florida . A former deposit in Lake Michigan has died out. They usually stay between vegetation, where they lurk as shock predators for prey . Adult fish also go into brackish water, especially in the winter months.
Reproduction
The common pike spawns in groups of one female and two to eight males. The males show no aggression against each other. Up to over 35,000 eggs are laid in shallow water. The eggs are poisonous and should tolerate brief drying out. After hatching, the larvae first attach themselves vertically to aquatic plants or stones with a suction cup on their foreheads until the yolk sac is consumed. Then they first feed on small crustaceans. From a length of five centimeters they hunt other small fish.
Web links
- Common Bake on Fishbase.org (English)
- Longnose Gar, NatureServe Explorer
- Lepisosteus osseus inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2013.2. Listed by: NatureServe, 2012. Retrieved February 9, 2014.