''Schindleria brevipinguis'' is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

of marine

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Gobiidae Gobiidae or gobies is a family (biology), family of bony fish in the order (biology), order Gobiiformes, one of the largest fish families comprising over 2,000 species in more than 200 genus, genera. Most of gobiid fish are relatively small, typ ...

Perciformes Perciformes (), also called the Acanthopteri, is an order or superorder of ray-finned fish in the clade Percomorpha. ''Perciformes'' means " perch-like". Among the well-known members of this group are perches and darters ( Percidae), and als ...

. 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 The Coral Sea () is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific off the northeast coast of Australia, and classified as an Interim Biogeographic Regionalisation for Australia, interim Australian bioregion. The Coral Sea extends down t ...

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 Fish measurement is the measuring of individual fish and various parts of fish anatomy, their anatomies, for data used in many areas of ichthyology, including Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy and fishery biology. Overall length Standard length (SL) is ...

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 ''Paedophryne amauensis'', also known as the New Guinea Amau frog, is a species of microhylid frog endemic to eastern Papua New Guinea. At in snout-to-vent length, it was once considered the world's smallest known vertebrate. (See also Ecolo ...

'', while the parasitic males of the

anglerfish The anglerfish are ray-finned fish in the order Lophiiformes (). Both the order's common name, common and scientific name comes from the characteristic mode of predation, in which a modified dorsal Fish fin#Ray-fins, fin ray acts as a Aggressiv ...

Photocorynus spiniceps ''Photocorynus'' is a monospecific genus of marine life, marine Actinopterygii, ray-finned fish belonging to the family leftvent, Linophrynidae, the leftvents. The only species in the genus is ''Photocorynus spiniceps''. ''Photocorynus'' was fi ...

'' 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 languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''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).

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 Gobiidae Fish described in 2004