Cyprinodon brontotheroides
species of fish
Cyprinodon brontotheroides, the molluscivore or durophage pupfish, is a species of ray-finned fish belonging to the family Cyprinodontidae, the killifishes. This species is endemic to San Salvador Island in the Bahamas.
Taxonomy
Cyprinodon brontotheroides was first formally described in 2013 by Christopher H. Martin and Peter C. Wainwright with its type locality given as Crescent Pond, San Salvador Island. The genus Cyprinodon is classified within the pupfish subfamily, Cyprinodontinae, belonging to the killifish family, Cyprinodontidae, which belongs to the suborder Cyprinodontoidei of the order Cyprinodontiformes.
Etymology
Cyprinodon brontotheroides belongs to the genus Cyprinodon, a name which combines Cyprinus, which means "carp" or "minnow", with "odon, meaning "tooth", in other words a carp- or cyprinid-like fish but with teeth, i.e. a toothcarp. The specific name, brontotheroides, suffixed -oides onto the name of the extinct family of Perissodactyla, the brontotheres. This is an allusion to the similarity of the protruding nasal region of this fish to the "bizarre" horn-like skull appendages of brontotheres.
Description
Cyprinodon brontotheroides is durophagous. It has a large in-lever to out-lever ratio for closing its lower jaw with force and a protruding, reinforced nasal region probably used for crushing its specialized diet of ostracods and gastropods.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cyprinodon brontotheroides” 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.