The Nature LibraryEN·ES
iNat·120658SpeciesActinopterygii65 field observations
  1. Animals
  2. ›Chordates
  3. ›Vertebrates
  4. ›Ray-finned Fishes
  5. ›Spiny-rayed fishes
  6. ›Needlefishes, Halfbeaks, and Allies
  7. ›Flyingfishes
  8. ›Hirundichthys
Mirrorwing Flyingfish
Plate 1 of 4. (c) Benoît Segerer, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Benoît Segerer · via iNaturalist

Mirrorwing Flyingfish

Hirundichthys speculiger

The mirrorwing flyingfish (Hirundichthys speculiger) is a flying fish of the family Exocoetidae. It was first described by the French zoologist, Achille Valenciennes in a 22-volume work titled Histoire naturelle des poissons (Natural History of Fishes), which was a collaboration with Georges Cuvier.

Continue reading on Wikipedia

From the article Mirrorwing flyingfish on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section

§1

Description

Mirrorwing flyingfish have 10-12 soft rays on their dorsal fins and 11-13 rays on their anal fins. Their bodies are generally dark, with blue on top and silver-white on bottom. The dorsal and caudal fins are both grayish, while the other fins are hyaline. Juveniles have more elongated bodies and mottled fins. Adults can grow up to 30 cm (1 ft) long, but usually they reach about 24 cm.

§2

Range & habitat

Mirrorwing flyingfish are known from warm surface waters worldwide, but are most common in tropical and temperate waters. In the Atlantic Ocean, they are common to the tropical areas in the east and all along the North and South American coasts, but are uncommon in the Gulf of Guinea, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico. They are curiously absent from the Benguela Current. In the Indian Ocean, mirrorwing are known from south Africa, Mauritius, Rodrigues, the Maldives, and the Chagos Archipelago. In the Pacific Ocean, they are known from most regions save the seas of southeast Asia. Mirrorwing flyingfish spawn year round in the offshore waters where they normally live attaching their eggs to floating debris in masses. Mirrorwing eggs use a series of filaments to achieve this attachment, the arrangement of which can be used to identify them as mirrorwing eggs.

Wikipedia: “Distribution and habitat”

§·

Where it lives

Recorded sightings

—

geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.

Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.

§·

In the stacks

Searching the stacks…

Every page naming Hirundichthys speculiger in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →

This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 120658.