Beltfish
| Beltfish | ||||||||||||
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The strapfish Regalecus glesne in the |
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| Regalecidae | ||||||||||||
| Gill , 1885 |
Beltfish (Regalecidae) are large, snake-shaped pelagic bony fish . Although found in all tropical and temperate oceans, they are rarely sighted. The beltfish family includes three known species . One species, Regalecus glesne , holds the record for the longest living bony fish: it reaches a length of up to eight meters.
features
Belt fish have a laterally compressed band-shaped body without scales. Their dorsal fin begins just above the eyes and almost reaches the tip of the tail. The first rays of the dorsal fin are greatly elongated and bright red in color. Overall, the dorsal fin is supported by 260 to 412 fin rays. The little eye is also red. The pelvic fins consist of a single, greatly elongated pair of fin rays. It sits far in front below the pectoral fins . Anal and caudal fin are missing, as is a swim bladder . The fish have 143 to 170 vertebrae . Your mouth is toothless. They probably feed on plankton . Agrostichthys parkeri has eight to ten gill spines in the throat area, Regalecus glesne 40 to 58. They use them to filter their food out of the water.
Systematics
The belt fish are divided into two genera :
- Genus Agrostichthys
- Agrostichthys parkeri (Benham, 1904)
- Genus Regalecus
- Regalecus glesne Ascanius, 1772
- Regalecus russelii (Cuvier, 1816)
Trivia
Because of their size and appearance, beltfish are believed to be the origin of many legends of sea snakes . Since the fish are very fragile, mostly only mutilated specimens can be found stranded.
Sightings and recordings of live belt fish are very rare. In 2008, a team led by Professor Mark Benfield from Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge) succeeded for the first time in filming an individual in the Gulf of Mexico with the help of a remote-controlled submersible .
literature
- Joseph S. Nelson : Fishes of the World. John Wiley & Sons, 2006, ISBN 0-471-25031-7 .
- Tyson R. Roberts : Systematics, Biology, and Distribution of the Species of the Oceanic Oarfish Genus Regalecus (Teleostei, Lampridiformes, Regalecidae). French National Museum Natural History, 2012, ISBN 978-2-85653-677-3
Individual evidence
- ↑ Craig R. McClain, Meghan A. Balk, Mark C. Benfield, Trevor A. Branch, Catherine Chen, James Cosgrove, Alistair DM Dove, Lindsay C. Gaskins, Rebecca R. Helm, Frederick G. Hochberg, Frank B. Lee , Andrea Marshall, Steven E. McMurray, Caroline Schanche, Shane N. Stone, Andrew D. Thaler. Sizing ocean giants: patterns of intraspecific size variation in marine megafauna. PeerJ , 2015; 2: e715 doi: 10.7717 / peerj.715
- ↑ Giant bizarre deep sea fish filmed in Gulf of Mexico. Video on BBC Earth News , October 7, 2008 (accessed December 22, 2012)
Web links
- Belt fish on Fishbase.org (English)
- Australian Museum: Oarfish Regalecus glesne
- Watch the first-ever footage of a live 8-foot long oarfish , June 2013
- Giant Sea Serpent, Meet The Myth , documentary by Bertrand Loyer, Saint Thomas Productions in coproduction with arte , France 2015 (English / French)