Schindleria brevipinguis is a species of seawater fish in family Gobiidae of Perciformes. Known as the stout infantfish, it is native to Australia's Great Barrier Reef and to Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea.
Anatomy
S. brevipinguis is among the smallest known fish in the world, together with species such as
Paedocypris progenetica. Males of
S. brevipinguis have an average
standard length of , a gravid female was and the maximum standard length of the species is .
It held the record for the smallest known vertebrate, but now, by a measurement of snout-to-vent length, the smallest vertebrate species currently is the recently (Jan 2012) described frog
Paedophryne amauensis, while the parasitic males of the
anglerfish Photocorynus spiniceps are but long.
S. brevipinguis is distinguished from the similar
S. praematura by having its first
anal fin ray further forward, under
dorsal fin 4, rather than 7–11 in
S. praematura. Like most closely related fishes, the fish is very thin, and one specimen weighed just 0.7 milligrams.
Taxonomy
The specific epithet,
brevipinguis, derives from the
Latin brevis (short) and
pinguis (stout), in reference to the fish's shorter, thicker body, as compared with other
Schindleria species.
The first specimen was collected by Jeff Leis in 1979, but the species was not formally described until a 2004 paper (Watson and Walker).
See also
External links
