Bird wrasse
| Bird wrasse | ||||||||||||
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Green bird wrasse ( Gomphosus varius ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Gomphosus | ||||||||||||
| Lacépède , 1801 |
The bird wrasse ( Gomphosus ), also called beaked wrasse or simply bird fish, stand out because of their elongated snouts. This enables them to prey on their food between the branches of coral sticks. They feed on hard-shelled invertebrates such as crabs , mollusks, and echinoderms . The long snout only grows from a length of ten centimeters. The females are lighter in color. Bird wrasse grow to be 30 centimeters long.
Fin formula : dorsal VIII / 13, anal III / 11
Systematics
There are 3 types or subspecies:
- The blue bird wrasse ( Gomphosus caeruleus caeruleus ) lives in the western Indian Ocean .
- Gomphosus caeruleus klunzingeri only lives in the Red Sea
- The green bird wrasse ( Gomphosus varius ) lives in the eastern Indian Ocean and in the Pacific to Hawaii .
From a phylogenetic point of view, the bird wrasse belong to the genus Thalassoma . Thalassoma can be divided into eight clearly delineated clades , in which species from certain marine regions such as the Indo-Pacific , western or eastern Atlantic are grouped together. Gomphosus is a sister group of an Indo-Pacific clade within Thalassoma . The two genera are so morphologically similar that the juvenile fish of Gomphosus varius were described as " Thalassoma stuckiae " in 1959 . The beak-shaped, elongated snout characteristic of Gomphosus only develops in the adult fish.
swell
- Hans A. Baensch / Robert A. Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 1 , Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-110-0
Remarks
- ↑ G. Bernardi, G. Bucciarelli, D. Costagliola, DR Robertson, JB Heiser: Evolution of coral reef fish Thalassoma spp. (Labridae). 1. Molecular phylogeny and biogeography , Marine Biology (2004) 144: 369–375 PDF ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Web links
- Bird Wrasse on Fishbase.org (English)