Seahorses and Pipefish Codexery

Seahorse

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Seahorse

Hans Hillewaert · via Wikipedia: Seahorse · CC BY-SA 4.0

Seahorses are small marine bony fish in the genus Hippocampus, comprising 47 species.[1] Seahorses possess a head that resembles a horse, a body covered in segmented bony plates, a vertical swimming orientation, and a tail that is prehensile and coiled.[1]

Scientific classification

  1. KingdomAnimalia
  2. PhylumChordata
  3. ClassActinopterygii
  4. DivisionTeleostei
  5. OrderSyngnathiformes
  6. FamilySyngnathidae
  7. GenusHippocampus

Named by Rafinesque, 1810

Sources: Wikipedia taxobox: Seahorse (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Quick Facts

Type species
Syngnathus hippocampus

Facts from the source article.

Biology and range

Seahorses range in size from 1.5 to 35 cm.[2] They lack scales and have thin skin over bony plates arranged in rings.[3] They have a flexible neck and a crown-like spine called a coronet.[4] Seahorses are found in shallow tropical and temperate waters from about 45°S to 45°N.[5]

They live in seagrass beds, estuaries, coral reefs, and mangroves.[5] Some species raft in sargassum clumps far from their original ranges.[6] The earliest known seahorse fossils are from the middle Miocene in Slovenia, about 13 million years old.[7] The quantity of bony rings varies by species, and this external skeleton serves as a defense mechanism against predators.[3]

Seahorses maintain a vertical position while swimming by using their dorsal fin for propulsion, and their pectoral fins, situated behind the eyes, are employed for directional control.[3][8]

What the specialist sources record

The Project Seahorse account notes that seahorses are sparsely distributed, found at 0.06 per m² in most populations.[9] The highest density, up to 0.66 per m², occurs in a tidal lake in the Bahamas.[9] Seahorses occupy diverse shallow water habitats including seagrasses, mangroves, corals, sponges, and seaweeds.[9] Some pygmy seahorses spend their entire life on a single sea fan.[9]

The discovery of seahorses in open ocean predators confirms they may occur far offshore.[9] A 2016 genome project sequenced the tiger tail seahorse and identified gene losses, including those for teeth and pelvic fins.[10] The same study found that gene duplications may have contributed to male pregnancy.[10]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "sea horse or seahorse"; "Hippocampus Rafinesque, 1810", WoRMS; "Habitats", Project Seahorse, 10 June 2021 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Seahorses, Seahorse Pictures, Seahorse Facts" (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Observatoire Océanologique de Banyuls sur mer", www.obs-banyuls.fr; Porter, "Highly deformable bones: Unusual deformation mechanisms of seahorse armor", Acta Biomaterialia, 2013, p. 6763–6770; "The galloping evolution in seahorses: Entire genome of the seahorse sequenced", ScienceDaily (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Freret-Meurer, "Seahorse Fingerprints: A New Individual Identification Technique", Environmental Biology of Fishes, 2013, p. 1399–1405 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Home", Project Seahorse (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  6. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Habitats", Project Seahorse, 10 June 2021 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: "Two new species of seahorses (Syngnathidae, Hippocampus) from the Middle Miocene (Sarmatian) Coprolitic Horizon in Tunjice Hills, Slovenia: The oldest fossil record of seahorses", Annales de Paléontologie, 2009, p. 71–9 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Seahorse" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Porter, "Why the seahorse tail is square", Science, 2015; Garrick-Maidment, "Seahorse Tagging Project, Studland Bay, Dorset, UK", Marine Biodiversity Records, 2010-01-01 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. "Habitats", Project Seahorse, 10 June 2021. facts only, no text reused. projectseahorse.org
  10. "The galloping evolution in seahorses: Entire genome of the seahorse sequenced", ScienceDaily. facts only, no text reused. sciencedaily.com

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Seahorse (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

Related entries

Syngnathidae

More in Seahorses and Pipefish

Barbour's seahorseBig-belly seahorseHippocampus colemaniDenise's pygmy seahorseDwarf seahorseFlat-faced seahorseGiraffe seahorseGreat seahorseHippocampus haemaHedgehog seahorseJapanese seahorseJapanese pygmy seahorse

Sources

Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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