Schindleria brevipinguis
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Schindleria brevipinguis is a species of marine fish in family Gobiidae of Perciformes. Known as the stout infantfish, it is native to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and to Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea.<ref name="WatsonWalker">Template:Cite journal</ref>
Anatomy
S. brevipinguis is among the smallest known fish in the world, together with species such as Paedocypris progenetica. Males of S. brevipinguis have an average standard length of Template:Convert, a gravid female was Template:Convert and the maximum standard length of the species is Template:Convert.<ref name=fishbase>Template:FishBase</ref> It held the record for the smallest known vertebrate, but now, by a measurement of snout-to-vent length, the smallest vertebrate speciesTemplate:Broken anchor currently is the recently (Jan 2012) described frog Paedophryne amauensis, while the parasitic males of the anglerfish Photocorynus spiniceps are but Template:Convert long. S. brevipinguis is distinguished from the similar S. praematura by having its first anal-fin ray further forward, under dorsal-fin 4, rather than 7–11 in S. praematura. Like most closely related fishes, the fish is very thin, and one specimen weighed just 0.7 milligrams.<ref name="WatsonWalker" />
Taxonomy
The specific epithet, brevipinguis, derives from the Latin brevis (short) and pinguis (stout), in reference to the fish's shorter, thicker body, as compared with other Schindleria species.
The first specimen was collected by Jeff Leis in 1979, but the species was not formally described until a 2004 paper (Watson and Walker).
See also
References
- McGrouther, M., J. Leis, T. Trnski. "Stout Infantfish, Schindleria brevipinguis". Fishes: Australian Museum Fish Site. July 2004.
- Picture of Stout Infantfish
