Name:
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- Lepomis, from the Greek, "scaled gill cover"
- cyanellus, from the Greek, "blue"
- Common Name from its bluish green color
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Taxonomy:
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- Kingdom Animalia
- Phylum Chordata, animals with a spinal chord
- Subphylum Vertebrata, animals with a backbone
- Superclass Osteichthyes, bony fishes
- Class Actinopterygii, ray-finned and spiny rayed fishes
- Subclass Neopterygii
- Infraclass Teleostei
- Superorder Acanthopterygii,
- Order Perciformes, the perch-like fishes
- Suborder Percoidei
- Family Centrarchidae, the Sunfishes
- Genus Lepomis, common and eared sunfishes
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Description:
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- A sunfish
- Length 8"-10"
- Weight
- Coloration
- back brownish, olive to blue-green
- sides are lighter and marked by vertical bars
- yellow underside
- face greenish with blue spots or lines
- Body
- thick bodied
- spiny dorsal fin of 10-11 spines, widely connected to soft dorsal fin
- opercular flap is usually short, hard, and inflexible
- gill flap dark but rimmed with yellow or white
- gill rakers long and slender
- lateral line complete with about 41-52 scales
- Head
- uncharacteristically large mouth for a sunfish
- jaw extends to midpoint of eye
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Identification:
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- Field Marks
- short, wide head, deep body, and big mouth;
- dark gill flap rimmed with yellow or white.
- jaw extends to midpoint of eye.
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Distribution:
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Habitat:
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- Broad range of water types, but primarily a stream fish.
- Highly tolerant of a variety of stresses, and able to utilize most habitat
types
- Tolerates a wide range of ecological conditions such as dissolved oxygen,
turbidity, flow, and temperature. Can survive in areas which cannot
be used by other species
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Food:
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- Aquatic and terrestrial insects, crayfish, mollusks, and small fish.
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History:
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- Minnesota Record: 1 lb 3oz, from Scheuble Lake (Carver County).
- U.S. Record, 2lb 2oz, from Stockton Lake, Missouri, 6/18/71, and Cherokee County pit, Kansas, 5/28/61
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Uses:
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Reproduction:
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- Males construct nests in shallow waters over variable substrates. Several
females spawn in a community nest with one male. Eggs are depostied and
attach to the substrate, where they are rigorously guarded by the male
for about a week, when the fry become free swimming. The fry mature within
two seasons.
- Hybridizes readily with other members of the genus Lepomis
- Opportunistic reproducer, usually among the first to repopulate intermittent
streams.
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Comments:
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- Adults are territorial with a well defined home range
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Links:
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Last updated on 15 October 1999
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