Hand fish

Hand fish
Brachionichthys hirsutus
Systematics
Acanthomorphata Spinefish (Acanthopterygii) Perch relatives (Percomorphaceae) Order : Armfinch (Lophiiformes) Subordination : Sensorfish-like (Antennarioidei) Family : Hand fish
Scientific name
Brachionichthyidae
Gill , 1878

Handfish (Brachionichthyidae) are a family of small, little-explored marine fish related to the frogfish . They live on the ocean floor, on the coast of southern Australia and endemic around Tasmania at depths of up to 60 meters.

features

Their skin is bare or covered in outgrowths, which have given them the name wart-anglers . Like other armfinches , handfish have a modified dorsal fin beam above their mouth, but this is short and does not seem to be used as bait . The second dorsal ray is connected to the third by a flap of skin and forms a ridge. The soft-rayed part of the dorsal fin has 15 to 19 undivided fin rays , the anal fin 7 to 10. The hand-like ventral fins have one hard and four soft rays. Together with the pectoral fins , they can be used for gait-like locomotion on the ground. The gill openings are small and lie behind the base of the pectoral fin.

Hand fish grow to be 2 to 15 centimeters long.

species

Sympterichthys politus

Thymichthys verrucosus

Histionotophorus bassani

There are 13 species in five genera:

• Brachionichthys Bleeker , 1855
  • Brachionichthys australis Last , Gledhill & Holmes , 2007
  • Brachionichthys hirsutus ( Lacépède , 1804)
• Brachiopsilus Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Brachiopsilus dianthus Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Brachiopsilus dossenus Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Brachiopsilus ziebelli Last & Gledhill, 2009
• Pezichthys Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Pezichthys amplispinus Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Pezichthys compressus Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Pezichthys eltanini Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Pezichthys macropinnis Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Pezichthys nigrocilium Last & Gledhill, 2009
• Sympterichthys Gill , 1878
  • Sympterichthys moultoni Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Sympterichthys politus ( Richardson , 1844)
• Thymichthys Last & Gledhill, 2009
  • Thymichthys verrucosus ( McCulloch & Waite , 1918)

Species that are extinct in the 21st century:

• Sympterichthys Gill , 1878
  • Sympterichthys unipennis ( Cuvier , 1817)

The fossil species Histionotophorus bassani , which is very similar to the recent ones, is known from the Eocene of Italy.

literature

• Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World , John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .
• Peter Robert Last, Daniel C. Gledhill: A revision of the Australian handfishes (Lophiiformes: Brachionichthyidae), with descriptions of three new genera and nine new species. Zootaxa , 2252, pp. 1–77, 2009 ( PDF )
• Peter Robert Last, Daniel C. Gledhill, Bonwyn H. Holmes: A new handfish, Brachionichthys australis sp. nov. (Lophiiformes: Brachionichthyidae), with a redescription of the critically endangered spotted handfish, B. hirsutus (Lacepède) . In: Zootaxa . tape 1666 , 2007, pp. 53–68 ( online [PDF; 16 kB ; accessed on November 24, 2013]).
• Allan Riverstone McCulloch, Edgar Ravenswood Waite: Some new and little-known fishes from South Australia . In: Records of the South Australian Museum . tape 1 , 1918, p. 39-82 ( online [accessed November 24, 2013]).

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Sympterichthys unipennis in the Red List of Threatened Species of the IUCN 2020.2. Posted by: PR Last, G. Edgar & R. Stuart-Smith, 2018. Retrieved August 14, 2020.

Web links

Commons : Handfishes (Brachionichthyidae)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hand fish on Fishbase.org (English)
• Pietsch, Theodore W. & Christopher P. Kenaley. 2007: Brachionichthyidae. Handfishes, warty anglerfishes. in The Tree of Life Web Project