Careproctus Spiraki
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''Careproctus spiraki'', or pimpled snailfish, is a small, marine, bottom-dwelling
snailfish The snailfishes or sea snails (not to be confused with invertebrate sea snails), are a family of marine ray-finned fishes. These fishes make up the Liparidae, a family classified within the order Scorpaeniformes. Widely distributed from the ...
. The
type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wikt:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally associated. In other words, a type is an example that serves to ancho ...
was collected in a bottom trawl 457 meters deep in Seguam Pass in the
Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; , "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before Alaska Purchase, 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain ...
. The species was first described to science by J. W. Orr in 2021.


Description

The description of this species is based on 19 individuals collected from deep water in the western Aleutians from 2000 to 2018. Their length varied from 38.7 mm to 52.5 mm. The head is rounded and tapers to a slender tail. They had between 38 and 43 dorsal-fin rays and 10 to 12 caudal-fin rays. They had 4 to 8
gill rakers Gill rakers in fish are bony or cartilaginous processes that project from the branchial arch (gill arch) and are involved with suspension feeding tiny prey. They are not to be confused with the gill filaments that compose the fleshy part of the ...
. The mouth of this species is about 1 cm wide and is lined with small teeth. These fish are pink-colored. Since seawater absorbs longer wavelengths of light, this color makes them harder to see for predators. This species is distinguished from similar North Pacific snailfishes by its more slender body which is covered in small bumps topped with tiny prickles, and anterior dorsal-fin rays that stick out of the fin's membrane. It is distinguished from the similar ''
Careproctus maslenikovae ''Careproctus maslenikovae'', or blushing snailfish, is a small, marine, bottom-dwelling snailfish. The type specimen was collected in a bottom trawl 234 meters deep west of the Islands of Four Mountains in the Aleutian Islands. The species was ...
'' by its more slender, less robust body.


Distribution

''Careproctus spiraki'' has been collected from
Kiska Island Kiska (, ) is one of the Rat Islands, a group of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska. It is about long and varies in width from . It is part of Aleutian Islands Wilderness and as such, special permission is required to visit it. The island ha ...
to Unmak Island in waters between 193 meters and 447 meters deep. All of the collections were from bottom trawls suggesting this species is
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 the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...
. Given the small number of deep-water trawls looking for tiny, non-commercial species of fish, it is possible that the species ranges unnoticed beyond the bounds of existing collections.


Life history

Little is known of the life history of this species. One was found in the stomach of darkfin
sculpin A sculpin is a type of fish that belongs to the superfamily Cottoidea in the order Perciformes.Kane, E. A. and T. E. Higham. (2012)Life in the flow lane: differences in pectoral fin morphology suggest transitions in station-holding demand acros ...
, ''Malacocottus zonurus,'' reinforcing the suggestion of its pink body color that ''C. spiraki'' is a prey species for larger fish. Among the nineteen ''C. spiraki'' collected were reproductively mature females from 39 to 52 mm long which were ripe with yolked eggs. No ripe males with swollen testes were found, leaving open the timing of spawning.


References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q116178322 spiraki