Gasterosteus is a genus of belonging to the family Gasterosteidae, the sticklebacks. These fishes are found in freshwater, brackish water and marine habitats in the Holarctic realm region.
Species
There are currently 6 recognized species in this genus:
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Gasterosteus aculeatus Carl Linnaeus, 1758 (Three-spined stickleback)
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Gasterosteus crenobiontus Băcescu & Rudolf Mayer, 1956 (Techirghiol stickleback)
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Gasterosteus islandicus Sauvage, 1874 (Iceland stickleback)
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Gasterosteus microcephalus Girard, 1854 (Smallhead stickleback)
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Gasterosteus nipponicus Masahito Higuchi, Harumi Sakai & Akira Goto, 2014
[Higuchi, M., Sakai, H. & Goto, A. (2014): A new threespine stickleback, Gasterosteus nipponicus sp. nov. (Teleostei: Gasterosteidae), from the Japan Sea region. Ichthyological Research, (61) 4: 341-351.]
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Gasterosteus wheatlandi Putnam, 1867 (Black-spotted stickleback)
Additionally there are a number of fossil species including:
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Gasterosteus abnormis Gretchina, 1981 (middle Miocene of Sakhalin, Russia)
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Gasterosteus doryssus (Jordan, 1907) (= Merriamella doryssa Jordan, 1907, G. apodus Mural, 1973) (late Miocene of Nevada, USA)
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Gasterosteus kamoensis Nazarkin, Yabumoto & Urabe, 2013 (Late Miocene of Japan)
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Gasterosteus orientalis Sychevskaya, 1981 (middle Miocene of Kamchatka Krai, Russia)
Fossils of essentially modern three-spined sticklebacks, assigned to
G. aculeatus, are known from the mid-late Miocene of California, USA.
