Western Atlantic seabream (''Archosargus rhomboidalis'') is an

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wo ...

-going

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of 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 the appropriate s ...

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% of li ...

in the

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

Sparidae The Sparidae are a family of fish in the order Perciformes, commonly called sea breams and porgies. The sheepshead, scup, and red seabream are species in this family. Most sparids are deep-bodied compressed fish with a small mouth separated by a ...

. It was first described in 1758 by the "father of modern taxonomy,"

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

, in the 10th edition of his book, ''

Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nomen ...

''. Within their native range, Western Atlantic seabream are also known as the seabream,Nelson, J.S., E.J. Crossman, H. Espinosa-Pérez, L.T. Findley, C.R. Gilbert, R.N. Lea and J.D. Williams 2004 Common and scientific names of fishes from the United States, Canada, and Mexico. American Fisheries Society, Special Publication 29, Bethesda, Maryland. brim,Zaneveld, J.S. 1983 Caribbean Fish Life. Index to the local and scientific names of the marine fishes and fishlike invertebrates of the Caribbean area (Tropical Western Central Atlantic Ocean) E.J. Brill / Dr. W. Backhuys, Leiden, 163 p. tropical sheepshead, chopa amarilla, or salema. Although they are eaten, and have been described as

pan fish Mowi ASA, formerly known as Marine Harvest ASA (until January 1, 2019), (Pan Fish prior to February 6, 2007), is a Norwegian seafood company with operations in a number of countries around the world. The company's primary interest is fish farmi ...

, Western Atlantic seabream have not gained the popularity as a

gamefish Game fish, sport fish or quarry refer to popular fish pursued by recreational anglers, and can be freshwater or saltwater fish. Game fish can be eaten after being caught, or released after capture. Some game fish are also targeted commerciall ...

that their relative, the sheepshead (''A. probatocephalus'') has.

Taxonomy and naming

Carl Linnaeus described the Western Atlantic seabream in the 1758 edition of ''Systema Naturae''.Linnaeus, C. 1758 (1 Jan.) Systema Naturae, Ed. X. (Systema naturae per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis. Tomus I. Editio decima, reformata.) Holmiae. Systema Naturae, Ed. X. v. 1: i–ii + 1–824. It was originally placed in '' Perca'', a genus currently containing three species of

freshwater Fresh water or freshwater is any naturally occurring liquid or frozen water containing low concentrations of dissolved salts and other total dissolved solids. Although the term specifically excludes seawater and brackish water, it does include ...

fishes, such as the

Yellow perch The yellow perch (''Perca flavescens''), commonly referred to as perch, striped perch, American perch, American river perch or preacher is a freshwater perciform fish native to much of North America. The yellow perch was described in 1814 by Samu ...

and European perch. It was later moved to the genus ''

Archosargus ''Archosargus'' is a genus of fish in the family Sparidae. Species Species include: * '' Archosargus aries'' (Valenciennes in Cuvier and Valenciennes, 1830) * '' Archosargus pourtalesii'' (Steindachner, 1881) * ''Archosargus probatocephalus ...

''. The

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

naturalist

Marcus Elieser Bloch Marcus Elieser Bloch (1723–1799) was a German physician and naturalist who is best known for his contribution to ichthyology through his multi-volume catalog of plates illustrating the fishes of the world. Brought up in a Hebrew-speaking Jewish ...

described this species in his work, ''Allgemeine Naturgeschichte der Fische'' (General Natural History of Fishes), under the name ''Archosargus unimaculatus'' in 1792, which is now considered an "ambiguous

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

".Randall, J.E. and R. Vergara R. 1978 Sparidae. In W. Fischer (ed.) FAO species identification sheets for fishery purposes. Western Central Atlantic (Fishing Area 31). FAO, Rome. Vol. 5. pag.var.

Description

The Western Atlantic seabream is similar to other members of its genus, such as the Sheepshead. They differ in that they are smaller, have several horizontal blue streaks, mixed with

gold Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile met ...

or yellow, and a dark spot at the shoulder. It does have vertical crossbars, like the Sheepshead, but they disappear with age. The maximum published length of a Western Atlantic seabream is , though they usually grow to about .Cervigón, F. 1993 Los peces marinos de Venezuela. Volume 2. Fundación Científica Los Roques, Caracas, Venezuela. 497 p. The heaviest was recorded to weigh . Western Atlantic seabream have nine spines on their

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

s, and 10–11 soft rays. On their

anal fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as se ...

s, they have only three spines, but the same number of rays. The large intestine of the Western Atlantic seabream makes up roughly 90% of the length of its entire digestive tract.

Male Male (symbol: ♂) is the sex of an organism that produces the gamete (sex cell) known as sperm, which fuses with the larger female gamete, or ovum, in the process of fertilization. A male organism cannot reproduce sexually without access to ...

s and

female Female (Venus symbol, symbol: ♀) is the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ovum, ova (egg cells), the type of gamete (sex cell) that fuses with the Sperm, male gamete during sexual reproduction. A female has larger gamet ...

s can be distinguished by the color of their

pelvic fins Pelvic fins or ventral fins are paired fins located on the ventral surface of fish. The paired pelvic fins are homologous to the hindlimbs of tetrapods. Structure and function Structure In actinopterygians, the pelvic fin consists of two en ...

: in males, the fin is partially or totally dark, while in females it is an orange color.

Distribution and habitat

Starr 031108-0092 Casuarina equisetifolia

Western Atlantic seabream are known from waters off

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and the northern

Gulf of Mexico The Gulf of Mexico ( es, Golfo de México) is an oceanic basin, ocean basin and a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean, largely surrounded by the North American continent. It is bounded on the northeast, north and northwest by the Gulf Coast of ...

, south to

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

.Hureau, J.-C. 1991 La base de données GICIM : Gestion informatisée des collections ichthyologiques du Muséum. pp. 225–227. In Atlas Préliminaire des Poissons d'Eau Douce de France. Conseil Supérieur de la Pêche, Ministère de l'Environnement, CEMAGREF et Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris. Oddly, they are not found near the

Bahamas The Bahamas (), officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the West Indies in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic. It takes up 97% of the Lucayan Archipelago's land area and is home to ...

,Smith, C.L. 1997 National Audubon Society field guide to tropical marine fishes of the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico, Florida, the Bahamas, and Bermuda. Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., New York. 720 p. though they are known from many other parts of the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

. They are commonly found in

mangrove swamp Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fre ...

s, and in muddy, or vegetated bottoms. They are occasionally found in

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estuari ...

water, and over

reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock out ...

s near mangroves. Western Atlantic seabream feed mainly on small,

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from ancient Greek, βένθος (bénthos), meaning "t ...

invertebrates Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

, such as

bivalves Bivalvia (), in previous centuries referred to as the Lamellibranchiata and Pelecypoda, is a class of marine and freshwater molluscs that have laterally compressed bodies enclosed by a shell consisting of two hinged parts. As a group, bival ...

crustaceans Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...

and aquatic plants and can live up to two years in the wild.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2700401 Sparidae Fish of the Atlantic Ocean Fish described in 1758 Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus