''Schindleria brevipinguis'' is a

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

of marine

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Gobiidae Gobiidae or gobies is a family of bony fish in the order Gobiiformes, one of the largest fish families comprising more than 2,000 species in more than 200 genera. Most of gobiid fish are relatively small, typically less than in length, and t ...

of Perciformes. Known as the stout infantfish, it is native to Australia's

Great Barrier Reef The Great Barrier Reef is the world's largest coral reef system composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands stretching for over over an area of approximately . The reef is located in the Coral Sea, off the coast of Queensland, ...

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 Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

''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 Jeff is a masculine name, often a short form (hypocorism) of the English given name Jefferson (given name), Jefferson or Jeffrey (given name), Jeffrey, which comes from a Middle Ages, medieval variant of Geoffrey (given name), Geoffrey. Music ...

in 1979, but the species was not formally described until a 2004 paper (Watson and Walker).

References

* McGrouther, M., J. Leis, T. Trnski.
Stout Infantfish, ''Schindleria brevipinguis''
. ''Fishes: Australian Museum Fish Site.'' July 2004.
Picture of Stout Infantfish

External links

Some records in the fish world
{{Taxonbar, from=Q137998 Schindleriidae Gobiidae Fish described in 2004