Callionymus belcheri

Callionymus belcheri, Belcher's dragonet or the flathead dragonet, is a species of dragonet native to the Pacific Ocean waters off of Australia and Papua New Guinea where it occurs at depths of from 18 to 36 metres (59 to 118 ft).

Callionymus belcheri
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Callionymiformes
Family: Callionymidae
Genus: Callionymus
Species:
C. belcheri
Binomial name
Callionymus belcheri
Synonyms
  • Calliurichthys belcheri (Richardson, 1844)
  • Calliurichthys recurvispinnis Li, 1966
  • Callionymus recurvispinnis (Li, 1966)
  • Repomucenus belcheri (Richardson 1844)

Description

Callionymus belcheri has a yellowish to brown head and body with many small white spots on its back. The flanks are marked with white blotches which have dark brown margins. The underside is white. There are two dorsal fins, the first dorsal fin is brownish in colour, with a distal margin that is often blackish and which in males has white spots. The second dorsal fin is marked wither with light and dark streaks or with small white spots. The anal fin of males has a dark streak and in females is colourless or has dark spots on ots distal portion. The lower two-thirds of the caudal fin has brown spots. The preopercular spine has a concave ventral margin. There are a total of 4 spines in the dorsal fins and 9 soft rays with 8 soft rays in the anal fin. This species grows to a length of 10 centimetres (3.9 in) SL.[1]

Distribution

Callionymus belcheri occurs in Queensland from Moreton Bay north to northern New Guinea and into the Gulf of Carpentaria,[2] and westwards to northern Western Australia.[3]

Habitat and biology

Callionymus belcheri is a marine, demersal fish which occurs at depth ranges of 18 to 36 metres (59 to 118 ft).[1] It has a varied diet which is mainly made up of invertebrates including polychaete worms, gastropods, bivalves, small crustaceans and scaphopods. Larger fish also ate echinoderms and Caperllids. They appear to feed mainly in the late afternoon between 16:00 and 18:00, spending the rest of the day buried in sand or mud. This species spawns once a year in the southern Autumn, from March to May. They mature at lengths of 70–80 millimetres (2.8–3.1 in) in both sexes and females become less fertile towards the end of their lives.[2]

Taxonomy and naming

The subspecies Callionymus belcheri recurvispinnis, as named by Fricke.[4] is regarded as a valid species by some authorities and is treated as such in FishBase, the authority used here for species of fish.[1]

The specific name honours the British Naval officer and explorer Admiral Sir Edward Belcher (1799-1877) who collected many specimens during his career and was a collector of shells.[5]

gollark: Anyway, we hit *those* limits ages ago, so we achieve our high clocks by extending the processors out into arbitrarily many orthogonal dimensions, ignoring the "speed of light", and patterning the logic gates directly onto underlying physical laws.
gollark: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_single_flux_quantum
gollark: Clock speeds are constrained mostly by CMOS processes as far as I know, lightspeed issues are secondary.
gollark: What? Superconducting logic circuits can easily hit tens of GHz.
gollark: Well, it or the newer models.

References
  1. Froese, Rainer and Pauly, Daniel, eds. (2018). "Callionymus belcheri" in FishBase. February 2018 version.
  2. Clifford Ray Johnson (1972). "Biology and Ecology of Callionymus belcheri (Pisces: Callionymidae)". Copeia. 1972 (3): 461–470. doi:10.2307/1442917. JSTOR 1442917.
  3. "Flathead Dragonet, Repomucenus belcheri (Richardson 1844)". Fishes of Australia. Museums Victoria. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
  4. Ronald Fricke (2002). "Annotated Checklist of the Dragonet Families Callionymidae and Draconettidae (Teleostei: Callionymoidei), with Comments on Callionymid Fish Classification" (PDF). Stuttgarter Beiträge zur Naturkunde Serie A (Biologie) (645).
  5. "Biographical Etymology of Marine Organism Names. B". Hans.G.Hansson. Retrieved 19 April 2018.
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