Small pipefish
| Small pipefish | ||||||||||||
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Lesser Pipefish ( Syngnathus rostellatus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Syngnathus rostellatus | ||||||||||||
| Nilsson , 1855 |
The small pipefish ( Syngnathus rostellatus ) is a species of pipefish found on the European Atlantic coast . It occurs from the coast of southern Norway (e.g. from Bergen ) over the Danish, German and Dutch North Sea coasts to the French Biscay coast , also around the British Isles (with the exception of northern Scotland), in the Kattegat , Skagerrak and in the western Baltic Sea about to Wismar .
features
The small pipefish has a very elongated, thin body and is up to 17 centimeters long. The snout with the upper mouth is cylindrical, round in diameter and elongated like a pipette. The snout diameter corresponds to the eye diameter or is smaller.
The small pipefish is variable brown in color. As with all pipefish, the body is armored by bone plates arranged in rings. Between the head and the base of the dorsal fin there are 13 to 15 bone plates. The lesser pipefish has a relatively small caudal fin.
It can easily be confused with adolescent great pipefish ( Syngnathus acus ), but differs from these by its shorter snout, which makes up about half the length of its head.
Way of life
The small pipefish lives in shallow water close to the coast from the flushing fringes to depths of 15 meters in seagrass meadows and above sandy soils with floating plant material. It feeds on zooplankton, small crustaceans and fish larvae.
The breeding season is in summer. The eggs, which are 1 millimeter in diameter, are taken over by the male during mating, who carries them in the brood pouch formed by two skin folds on the underside of the tail until the young sea needles hatch. The young sea needles hatch with a length of 13 to 14 millimeters and initially live pelagic .
literature
- Rudie H. Kuiter : Seahorses: pipefish, shredded fish and their relatives . Ulmer (Eugen), 2001, ISBN 3-8001-3244-3
- Bent J. Muus, Jørgen G. Nielsen: The marine fish of Europe in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Atlantic. Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07804-3 .
Web links
- Small Pipefish on Fishbase.org (English)