Tropical fish
| Tropical fish | ||||||||||||
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Tropical fish ( Atractosteus tropicus ) |
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| Atractosteus tropicus | ||||||||||||
| Gill , 1863 |
The Tropical gar ( Atractosteus tropicus ) is a species from the family of bone pike (Lepisosteidae) which flows in southern Mexico and Central America found.
features
Tropical pike can reach a body length of up to 1.25 meters and a maximum weight of about three kilograms. As with other bake, the body is almost cylindrical, with jaws elongated into a snout, dorsal and anal fins set far back, and pectoral and ventral fins set deep on the body . All fins only show soft rays. The entire body is covered by diamond-shaped, non-overlapping ganoid scales. In front of the dorsal fin there are 43 to 48 scales, along the sides 51 to 56 rows. The back is uniformly gray-brown in color, the belly is whitish. The fins are yellowish-brown.
Occurrence
The species colonizes quiet or slowly flowing areas in rivers and lakes in the Central American lowlands. Three populations are known. On the Pacific side, the species occurs from southern Chiapas in Mexico to the Rio Negro in Nicaragua. The widely separated populations on the Atlantic side probably descend from this population, one of which is found in the Usumacinta and Coatzacoalcos in southern Mexico and Guatemala and the other in Lake Nicaragua and the river system of the Río San Juan in Nicaragua .
Way of life
Tropical fish are lurking hunters who feed primarily on fish and possibly also on crustaceans. Spawns are deposited in shallow lakes at the beginning of the dry season and in the flooded vegetation at river banks in the rainy season in June and July. The animals lay their eggs in large groups in a gelatinous mass.
swell
- William A. Bussing: Peces de las aguas continentales de Costa Rica . 2nd Edition. Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, 1998, ISBN 978-9977-67-489-6 , p. 57-59 .
- Tropical fish on Fishbase.org (English)
Individual evidence
- ^ The living marine resources of the Western Central Atlantic. Volume 2: Bony fishes part 1 (Acipenseridae to Grammatidae) . In: KE Carpenter (Ed.): FAO Species Identification Guide for Fishery Purposes and American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists Special Publication . tape 5 . FAO, Rome 2002, p. 676 ( full text [PDF]).