Pennant piranhas
| Pennant piranhas | ||||||||||
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Young fish |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Catoprion | ||||||||||
| Müller & Troschel , 1844 |
The pennant piranhas ( Catoprion ; size : "kato" = below, "prion" = saw) are a genus of freshwater fish from the family of Sägesalmler (Serrasalmidae). They occur with two types in the river basins of the Amazon , the Orinoco , the Essequibo and in the upper river basin of the Río Paraguay .
features
Pennant piranhas become 15 cm long. Your body is disc-shaped and strongly flattened on the sides. The belly edge is covered with 36 to 37 saw scales. The adipose fin is relatively long. The mouth is directed upwards, the intermaxillary bone (premaxillary) and the strong, bulging, protruding lower jaw are each covered with a very irregular row of teeth. The teeth have a broad base and a clearly defined central point. Pennant piranhas are silvery, sometimes shiny green and silver. Their top is darker. There is an orange spot on the gill cover and a black spot at the base of the caudal fin. The front part of the caudal fin is yellowish, the upper and lower edges, sometimes also the rear edge, are blackish. The first rays of the dorsal and anal fin are greatly elongated. The first ray of the dorsal fin is white, the next three black. The anal fin is reddish, its first fin ray is also white. The eye is black and surrounded by a silver ring. The side line is contrasted in color. Gender differences are not known.
- Fin formula : dorsal 2 / 13–14, anal 3 / 33–34
- Scale formula 80 (mLR)
Young fish live in schools, old animals are loners.
nutrition
Pennant piranhas feed in part on the scales of larger fish. Ladiges reported that the attack came from the bottom up.
Systematics
Catoprion mento , the first species of pennant piranhas known to science, was first described in 1819 by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier under the name Serrasalmus mento . The genus Catoprion was introduced in 1844 by the German zoologists Johannes Müller and Franz Hermann Troschel . The genus remained monotypical until 2020 when morphological studies and the discovery of greater genetic distance within the genus Catoprion showed the existence of a second species. This was given the scientific name Catoprion absconditus .
In the past, the genus Catoprion was assigned to the real tetras (Characidae) in its own subfamily (Catoprioninae) . Today they belong to the family of the Sägesalmler (Serrasalmidae) and together with other carnivorous species of Sägesalmler they form the clade of the piranhas .
species
- Catoprion mento ( Cuvier , 1819), lives in the catchment area of the western Amazon, in the Orinoco region and in the upper Rio Paraguay .
- Catoprion absconditus Mateussi et al., 2020, occurs in the catchment area of the eastern Amazon and in the Essequibo .
literature
- Günther Sterba : The world's freshwater fish. 2nd Edition. Urania, Leipzig / Jena / Berlin 1990, ISBN 3-332-00109-4 .
- Axel Zarske: Catoprion mento. In: Claus Schaefer, Torsten Schröer (Hrsg.): The large lexicon of aquaristics. 2 volumes. Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-8001-7497-9 , p. 199.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Nadayca TB Mateussi, Bruno F. Melo u. Claudio Oliveira: Molecular delimitation and taxonomic revision of the wimple piranha Catoprion (Characiformes: Serrasalmidae) with the description of a new species. Journal of Fish Biology, June 2020, doi: 10.1111 / jfb.14417
- ↑ B. Freemann, LG Nico, N. Osentoski, HJ Jelks, TM Collins: Molecular systematics of Serrasalmidae: Deciphering the identities of piranha species and unraveling their evolutionary histories , Zootaxa ISSN 1175-5334 (online edition) PDF