White-spotted puffer fish
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White-spotted pufferfish ( Arothron hispidus ) |
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| Arothron hispidus | ||||||||||||
| ( Linnaeus , 1758) |
The white-spotted pufferfish ( Arothron hispidus ) lives in the Red Sea and the Indo-Pacific from East Africa to the coast of Lower California and Panama , north to Japan and Hawaii , south to the South African Cape Province , Rapa Iti and Lord Howe Island . It prefers sandy soils in lagoons and outer reefs , at depths of one to 50 meters. Young fish are often found in weed estuaries.
White-spotted pufferfish are gray to green-brown, the back, flanks and caudal fin are patterned with white dots and covered by small spines. The population of the Red Sea has smaller but more points. White-spotted pufferfish grow to be up to half a meter long.
Fin formula : dorsal 10–11, anal 10–11
White-spotted puffer fish living close to the ground, are solitary and territorial and feed on coralline algae , detritus , molluscs and tunicates , sponges , corals , anemones , tube worms and echinoderms (including large crown-of-thorns starfish ).
literature
- Baensch, Patzner: Mergus Sea Water Atlas Volume 6 Non-Perciformes (non-perch-like) . Mergus-Verlag, Melle, ISBN 3-88244-116-X
- Ewald Lieske, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish of the world . Year Top Special Verlag Hamburg, ISBN 3-86132-112-2
- Dieter Eichler, Robert F. Myers: Coral fish Indo-Pacific . Jahr-Verlag GmbG & Co., ISBN 3-86132-225-0
Web links
- White-Spotted Pufferfish on Fishbase.org (English)