Small earfish

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Small earfish
Atherina boyeri, Gulf of Odessa, Black Sea.jpg

Small earfish ( Atherina boyeri )

Systematics
Ovalentaria
Superordinate : Earfish relatives (Atherinomorphae)
Order : Earfish (Atheriniformes)
Family : Old world earfish (Atherinidae)
Genre : Atherina
Type : Small earfish
Scientific name
Atherina boyeri
Risso , 1810

The small earfish ( Atherina boyeri ) is a species of Old World earfish that can be found in the eastern Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

features

The small earfish has an elongated and slender body and reaches a body length of a maximum of 10 centimeters, whereby it is more than 4 times as long as it is high. The pointed head has an upwardly pointing, upper mouth. The body is translucent with a gray-blue to brown back and silvery-white flanks that have a gray vertical stripe and a dark row of dots.

The dorsal fin is divided. The first dorsal fin has 7 to 8 hard rays and the second dorsal fin sits above the anal fin and has a hard ray and 11 soft rays. The anal fin has one hard and 11 to 15 soft fin rays. The pelvic fins are on the chest. A total of 44 to 48 scales lie along the sideline .

Atherina boyeri is a species with a relatively wide range of morphological and meristic (countable) characteristics, which overlap with those of the other species in the genus. This is attributed to the different living conditions in which the different populations of this species occur.

distribution

There are fossils from the Messinian found a section of the Earth's approximately 7-5 million years ago, where the Mediterranean largely dried up ( Messinian salinity crisis ), the kind of living today Atherina Boyeri be assigned.

The small earfish can be found today in the eastern Atlantic from Portugal to Morocco as well as in the Mediterranean , the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea, and individual populations also live in the North Sea .

Way of life

Small ear fish live as schooling fish near the coast at depths of up to 10 meters, where they occasionally invade lagoons and brackish water from estuaries. They are mainly found on the surface and feed on plankton organisms and fish larvae.

The breeding season of the fish extends from April to July. The 1.8 to 2 millimeter large eggs are released into the open water and hook onto algae with fine threads. The fish are sexually mature after about a year, the maximum age is about 3 years.

supporting documents

  1. a b c d e Andreas Vilcinskas : Fish - Central European freshwater species and marine fish of the North and Baltic Seas . BLV Verlagsgesellschaft, Munich 2000, p. 140. ISBN 3-405-15848-6 .
  2. ^ A b G. Carnevale, E. Haghfarshi, S. Abbasi, H. Alimohammadian, B. Reichenbacher: A New Species of Silverside from the Late Miocene of NW Iran . In: Acta Palaeontologica Polonica . tape 56 , no. 4 , 2011, p. 749-756 , doi : 10.4202 / app.2011.0003 .
  3. a b Small earfish on Fishbase.org (English)

literature

Web links

Commons : Small earfish ( Atherina boyeri )  - Collection of images, videos and audio files