Oxyurichthys petersii

Oxyurichthys petersii, Peters' goby, is a species of ray-finned fish, a goby, from the family Oxudercidae from the Red Sea, it has colonised the eastern Mediterranean Sea by Lessepsian migration through the Suez Canal.

Oxyurichthys petersii
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Gobiiformes
Family: Oxudercidae
Genus: Oxyurichthys
Species:
O. petersii
Binomial name
Oxyurichthys petersii
(Klunzinger, 1871)
Synonyms[1]
  • Apocryptes petersii Klunzinger, 1871
  • Oxyurichthys petersi (Klunzinger, 1871)

Description

Oxyurichthys petersii is grey-blue in colour marked with blue spots and streaks on the head and the body. It does not have the vertical bars seen in Oxyurichthys papuensis, with which it has been confused. The caudal fin is reddish with a dark edge and there is a dark spot on the caudal peduncle. The pelvic fins are bluish marked with yellow spots and lines and the pectoral fins are yellowish in colour with white spots while the dorsal and anal fins are either transparent or have a reddish hue and have blue lines. Caudal fin reddish with dark margin.[2] The ventral surface is whitish. The first dorsal fin is low with the tips of the spines extending beyond the membrane and these may be longer in males than in females.[3]

Distribution

Oxyurichthys petersii is native to the Red Sea, it was first recorded in the Mediterranean in 1982 off Ashdod[4] and it is now common throughout the eastern Mediterranean from Israel to the Aegean Sea.[5]

Habitat and biology

Oxyurichthys petersii lives on soft bottoms[2] and is a carnivorous species which has been found to have sand and mud in their intestinal tract which suggest they feed on the bottom. Animals found in samples include formaniferans, harpactoid copepods, tanaidaceans, amphipods, isopods, ostracods, molluscs and echinoderms. The gonads of fish sampled in August and November off Israel were well developed.[3]

Name

The specific name honours the German naturalist and explorer Wilhelm Peters (1815-1883) who was a curator at the Berlin Zoological Museum and who allowed the author of this species liberal access to the Museum's collection.[6]

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References
  1. Froese, Rainer and Pauly, Daniel, eds. (2018). "Oxyurichthys petersii" in FishBase. June 2018 version.
  2. "Oxyurichthys petersii (Klunzinger, 1871)". Robert A. Patzner. Retrieved 2 September 2018.
  3. Pezold, F.L. & Larson, H.K. (2015). "A revision of the fish genus Oxyurichthys (Gobioidei: Gobiidae) with descriptions of four new species" (PDF). Zootaxa. 3988 (1): 1–95. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3988.1.1. PMID 26250215.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
  4. Ben-Tuvia A (1983). "An Indo-Pacific goby Oxyurichthys papuensis (Valenciennes, 1837) in the eastern Mediterranean". Israel Journal of Zoology. 20: 1–39.
  5. Menachem Goren; Kfir Gayer & Nimrod Lazarus (2009). "First record of the Far East chameleon goby Tridentiger trigonocephalus (Gill, 1859) in the Mediterranean Sea" (PDF). Aquatic Invasions. 4 (2): 413–415. doi:10.3391/ai.2009.4.2.22.
  6. Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara (6 December 2017). "Order GOBIIFORMES: Family OXUDERCIDAE (a-o)". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara.
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