Slender-tailed lantern fish
| Slender-tailed lantern fish | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Slender- tailed lanternfish ( Myctophum punctatum ) |
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Myctophum punctatum | ||||||||||||
| Rafinesque , 1810 |
The slim- tailed lantern fish ( Myctophum punctatum ) is a small oceanic deep-sea fish that occurs in the northern Atlantic between 69 ° and 15 ° north latitude.
distribution
Its distribution area extends in the eastern Atlantic from the coast of Greenland to the coast of Morocco and Mauritania , where nutrient-rich deep waters rise. It is found in the western Atlantic from the coast of the USA to that of Greenland. It is also found in the Mediterranean , where it is one of the most common lanternfish. During winter storms, the fish are thrown en masse on the beach on the Ligurian Riviera.
features
The fish are slender and about eleven centimeters long. Their body color is silvery. The rear end of the upper jaw is narrow, the tail fin stalk is twice as long as it is high. Like all lantern fish, the slender-tailed lantern fish has luminous organs in rows along the lower half of the body and on the head. The last two luminous organs below in front of the caudal fin are set apart from the other luminous organs along the edge of the abdomen. The last luminous organ is raised. The caudal fin is forked, behind the dorsal fin there is a small adipose fin . Males have three luminous organs on the upper side of the tail fin stalk, females 2 to 6 on the underside. They produce a pale blue light. The luminous organs only form at a length of 2 cm.
Way of life
The slim-tailed lantern fish is a fish of the open ocean that lives at depths of around 225 to 750 meters during the day, but ascends to depths above 125 meters in search of food at night ( vertical migration ). It feeds mainly on copepods , small krill , the zoo stages of crabs , fish eggs and larvae. The fish reach sexual maturity at a length of five centimeters. The spawning season extends from April to July. Depending on their size, the females lay around 800 to 900 eggs. The larvae have short stalk eyes.
literature
- Bent J. Muus, Jørgen G. Nielsen: The marine fish of Europe in the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Atlantic. Kosmos, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-440-07804-3 .
- Kurt Fiedler, Textbook of Special Zoology, Volume II, Part 2: Fish , Gustav Fischer Verlag Jena, 1991, ISBN 3-334-00339-6
Web links
- Slender-tailed Lanternfish on Fishbase.org (English)