Atractoscion atelodus
species of fish
Atractoscion atelodus, the small lunate caudal fin croaker, teraglin, Jew, teraglin-Jew, trag or trag-Jew, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Sciaenidae, the drums and croakers. This species is endemic to the eastern coast of Australia.
Taxonomy
Atractoscion atelodus was first formally described as Otolithus atelodus in 1867 by the German born British herpetologist and ichthyologist Albert Günther with its type locality given as Australia. Previously it was considered that this taxon was a synonym of A. aequidens which was thought to have a wide distribution in the southeastern Atlantic and Indo-West Pacific but in 2017 workers described two new species and resurrected A. atelodus from the western Pacific, restricting A. aequidens to the southwestern Indian Ocean. This species is classified in the family Sciaenidae which is placed within the suborder Sciaenoidei of the order Acanthuriformes in the 5th edition of Fishes of the World. The specific name atelodus means "imperfect teeth", an allusion to the lack of canines.
Description
Atractoscion atelodus is a large species with a slender, elongate body and a pointed snout, large oblique mouth with a slightly protruding lower jaw. The dorsal fin is supported by 11 spines and 31 to 34 soft rays while the anal fin has 2 spines and 9 soft rays. The adults have no canine-like teeth and the caudal fin is emarginate. The colour of the body is iridescent blue and purple, frequently with diagonal black lines on the flanks.
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This entry incorporates text from “Atractoscion atelodus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.