Net moray
| Net moray | ||||||||||||
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Reticulated moray ( Gymnothorax favagineus ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gymnothorax favagineus | ||||||||||||
| Bloch & Schneider , 1801 |
The net moray ( Gymnothorax favagineus , syn .: G. permistus ) is one of the largest and at the same time most strikingly colored species of moray eels (Muraenidae).
distribution
The net moray lives in the Red Sea and the tropical Indo-Pacific from East Africa to the Society Islands , Hawaii and south to the Great Barrier Reef . It is particularly common in the Gulf of Aden . In the eastern Pacific , it occurs from southern Baja California to northern Colombia and the Galapagos Islands . It lives mainly in rocky and outer reefs in areas with high currents and depths of one to 40 meters. Most of the time, the animals stay deeper than four meters.
features
Net morays are up to 2.5 meters long, in exceptional cases even 3 meters. They have numerous dark spots, which are surrounded by a thin white network drawing, so that a honeycomb-like pattern results. Individual copies can also be almost entirely black. The number of dark spots increases with age, but their size decreases. The differences in the drawing meant that the young animals were previously regarded as a separate species (“small net moray ” ( G. permistus )).
Net morays have 140 to 143 vertebrae .
Way of life
Reticulated morays live individually in rock and coral reefs . They feed mainly on cephalopods and fish. Animals kept in aquariums also eat shrimp, clam meat, and squashed crabs. The reproductive biology of net morays is unknown. Net moray eels are often seen being cleaned by cleaner wrasse or cleaner shrimp .
literature
- Dieter Eichler, Robert F. Myers: Korallenfische Zentraler Indopazifik , Jahr-Verlag GmbH & Co., 1997, ISBN 3-86132-225-0
- Ewald Lieske, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish of the world . Year Top Special Verlag Hamburg, 1994, ISBN 3-86132-112-2
- Hans A. Baensch / Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (Non-Perciformes) , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, 1998, ISBN 3-88244-116-X
- Marco Lichtenberger: Moray eels in the seawater aquarium. Natur und Tier Verlag, 2008, ISBN 978-3-86659-081-6
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Marco Lichtenberger: Large or small net moray . In Der MeerwasserAquarianer, specialist magazine for seawater aquaristics, 1/2009, Rüdiger Latka Verlag, ISSN 1432-1505
Web links
- Net moray on Fishbase.org (English)