Clinocottus globiceps
species of fish
Clinocottus globiceps, the mosshead sculpin or globe-headed sculpin, is a species of marine ray-finned fish belonging to the family Cottidae, the typical sculpins. This sculpin is found in the northeastern Pacific.
Taxonomy
Clinocottus globiceps was first formally described as Oligocottus globiceps in 1858 by the French ichthyologist Charles Frédéric Girard with its type locality given as Southern Farallones Island, off San Francisco in California. This species is classified within the subgenus Blennicottus, of which it is the type species, which was proposed by Theodore Gill in 1861 and is the clade of round headed species within the genus Clinocottus, these species seemingly not being the closest relatives of the two sharp snouted species. The specific name, globiceps, means "spherical head", an allusion its rounded head profile.
Description
Clinocottus globiceps has 9 or 10 spines and between 15 and 17 soft rays supporting its dorsal fins and 10 to 12 soft rays in the anal fin. The caudal fin is rounded while the pectoral fins have their 8 lower fin rays thickened with 7 of these being excised. This species has a dense covering cirri on the head, especially between the eyes, and lateral line. There is a single blunt upper spine on the preoperculum. The maximum published total length of this species is 19 cm (7.5 in).
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This entry incorporates text from “Clinocottus globiceps” 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.