Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Friday Fish: Albula vulpes

The bonefish, yet another stupid, lame common name (lots of fishes have bones). Anyway, apparently this species is much admired by recreational anglers as a game fish.


Photo credit here.

4 comments:

Carlo said...

This fish may be lame, but Axel Meyer presented a video of a cichlid getting its eggs orally fertilized... if you know what I mean.

TheBrummell said...

I have met Axel Meyer, and cite his research repeatedly in my M.Sc. thesis. I didn't realize he was working with videos of cichlid courtship / mating, but I'm not particularly surprised. I'd like to see that video... Cichlids have some very interesting behaviours.

Anonymous said...

Ben Here,
Just a curiosity thought, anyone know where vulpes comes from in Latin? The red fox is Vulpes vulpes, and now the bone fish also has a species name of vulpes?

thanks

TheBrummell said...

Hi Ben,

That's an interesting question. I don't know why this fish is named after a fox. Seems latinesque species binomials are not immune to weird and probably irrelevant naming conventions. Actually, I already knew that, I just didn't expect to find an example in this form, where the common name does not match the apparent origins of the latin binomial.