Small dragon head
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Small scorpionfish ( Scorpaena notata ) |
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| Scorpaena notata | ||||||||||||
| Rafinesque , 1810 |
The scorpionfish ( Scorpaena notata ) is a fish from the scorpion fish family (Scorpaenidae). It lives in the Mediterranean (rarely in the Adriatic ), in the eastern Atlantic , from the Bay of Biscay to Senegal and the Canaries , Azores and Madeira . The subspecies Scorpaena notata afimbria lives in the Black Sea .
features
The little dragon head has a stocky, slightly high-backed body. The head and mouth are large, the eyes large and set high. Above the eyes is a small tentacle that is shorter than the diameter of the eye. Unlike many other scorpion fish, it has no tentacles on its chin. The dorsal fin is long and has an indentation between the front, hard-rayed and the rear, soft-rayed part. The color of the little scorpionfish is mostly red or red-brown and more or less piebald. In the rear part of the hard-rayed part of the dorsal fin is often a dark spot that extends over several fin rays. The fish usually only reach a length of 15 centimeters, rarely they are 20, at most up to 24 centimeters long.
Way of life
The little scorpionfish prefers rocky habitats at depths of five to 700 meters, but can also be found on sandy and muddy bottoms and in seagrass meadows . It feeds mainly on crustaceans . Small fish make up only 8% of its diet. In the Mediterranean, they spawn in May. The eggs measure 0.88 × 0.76 mm and the larvae that have just hatched are two millimeters long.
literature
- Hans A. Baensch , Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (non-perch-like) . Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X .
- Matthias Bergbauer, Bernd Humberg: What lives in the Mediterranean? Franckh-Kosmos Verlag, 1999, ISBN 3-440-07733-0 .
Web links
- Little dragon head on Fishbase.org (English)