Short-headed Lamprey
Mordacia mordax
Mordacia mordax, known as the short-headed lamprey, Australian lamprey or Murray lamprey, is a species of Mordacia that lives in south-eastern Australia and Tasmania. Mordaciidae is made up of three species: M. praedox, M. mordax, and M. lapicida. M. mordax is a relatively rare, parasitic vertebrate and, along with the hagfishes, is part of the only surviving group of jawless organisms throughout vertebrate evolution. It has a thin eel-like body up to 50 cm (20 in) long, with two low dorsal fins on the back half. The skin is blue-gray or brown. Its eyes are small, and located on the top of its head.
From the article Mordacia mordax on Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), quoted section by section
What it does
Adult M. mordax are parasites on other fish. They are anadromous (breeding in fresh water), migrating up streams in southeastern Australia from Shoalhaven River, New South Wales to Gulf St Vincent, South Australia. The ammocoetes (lamprey larvae) remain in fresh water until undergoing extreme physiological changes that allow them to move from eating plankton to larger fish. This leads to them migrating to the South Pacific and Southern Oceans around three to four years after hatching. Adults have been found to travel hundreds of miles to spawn. Feeding occurs in the open ocean until full sexual maturation occurs when M. mordax returns to freshwater rivers, spawns, and dies.
Wikipedia: “Behavior and ecology”
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 Mordacia mordax 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 370904.