Heterenchelyidae
The Heterenchelyidae or mud eels are a small family of eels native to the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and eastern Pacific.
Heterenchelyids are bottom-dwelling fish adapted to burrowing into soft mud. They have large mouths and no pectoral fin
F ...
(mud eels).''Pythonichthys asodes'' at www.fishbase.org. It was described by
Richard Heinrich Rosenblatt
Richard Heinrich Rosenblatt (December 21, 1930 – October 14, 2014) was an American ichthyologogist. Rosenblatt was born in Kansas City, Missouri in 1930, and died in San Diego, California in 2014. Rosenblatt was awarded the Frederick H. Sto ...
and
Ira Rubinoff
Ira Rubinoff (born 1938) is an American marine biologist and was a former director of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama.
Education
Ira Rubinoff attended Queens College, graduating in 1959, and went on to Harvard Universit ...
marine
Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean.
Marine or marines may refer to:
Ocean
* Maritime (disambiguation)
* Marine art
* Marine biology
* Marine debris
* Marine habitats
* Marine life
* Marine pollution
Military
* ...
eel which is known from the eastern central Pacific Ocean, including
Costa Rica
Costa Rica (, ; ; literally "Rich Coast"), officially the Republic of Costa Rica ( es, República de Costa Rica), is a country in the Central American region of North America, bordered by Nicaragua to the north, the Caribbean Sea to the no ...
,
El Salvador
El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...
,
Guatemala
Guatemala ( ; ), officially the Republic of Guatemala ( es, República de Guatemala, links=no), is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico; to the northeast by Belize and the Caribbean; to the east by H ...
,
Honduras
Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...
, Mexico, Panama, and Nicaragua.''Pythonichthys asodes'' at the IUCN redlist. It dwells at a maximum depth of 17 metres, typically habituating muddy
substrate
Substrate may refer to:
Physical layers
*Substrate (biology), the natural environment in which an organism lives, or the surface or medium on which an organism grows or is attached
** Substrate (locomotion), the surface over which an organism lo ...
s in estuaries. It is able to survive in water with a low salt concentration. Males can reach a maximum total length of 47.2 centimetres. The eels' diet consists primarily of
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 ...
gastropod
The gastropods (), commonly known as snails and slugs, belong to a large taxonomic class of invertebrates within the phylum Mollusca called Gastropoda ().
This class comprises snails and slugs from saltwater, from freshwater, and from land. T ...
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 ...
.
Due to its wide distribution, lack of threats and lack of observed population declines, the IUCN redlist currently lists the Pacific mud eel as Least Concern.