Scatophagus
| Scatophagus | ||||||||||||
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Common argus fish ( Scatophagus argus ) |
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Scatophagus | ||||||||||||
| Cuvier in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1831 |
Scatophagus is the type genus of the Argus fish (Scatophagidae). The two species of the genus occur in the coastal sea, in brackish water and in the lower reaches of rivers in the tropical Indo-Pacific.
features
Scatophagus species are 30 to 40 cm long. They have a high-backed, headless, almost rectangular body, strongly flattened on the sides, which is patterned by spots or stripes. Scatophagus differs from Selenotoca , the sister genus in the family of the Argus fish, in having a higher body, as well as in the incomplete separation of the hard-radiating and soft-radiating part of the dorsal fin and the flag-like, soft-radiating sections of the dorsal and anal fin that protrude vertically from the body profile.
species
- Common argus fish ( Scatophagus argus ) (Linnaeus, 1766), up to 38 cm long, lives in the Persian Gulf and the Indo-Pacific : in the north to southern Japan , in the south to New Caledonia .
- African argus fish ( Scatophagus tetracanthus ) (Lacépède, 1802), up to 38 cm long, Indo-Pacific: From Somalia to South Africa , to Australia and New Guinea . In East Africa also in rivers and lagoons .
- Scatophagus frontalis , fossil from Monte Bolca
literature
- Günther Sterba : The world's freshwater fish. 2nd Edition. Urania, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-332-00109-4 , p. 671.
Web links
- Scatophagus on Fishbase.org (English)