''Ambassis marianus'', commonly known as the estuary perchlet, Ramsay's glassfish, estuary glassfish or glass perchlet, is a species of

fish Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...

in the family

Ambassidae The Asiatic glassfishes are a family, the Ambassidae, of freshwater and marine fishes that were formerly classified in the order Perciformes, but most authorities consider this order to be paraphyletic and that the Ambassidae are of uncertain a ...

. It is native to coastal eastern Australia. It gains its common name from its transparent appearance.

Taxonomy

German-British naturalist

Albert Günther Albert Karl Ludwig Gotthilf Günther FRS, also Albert Charles Lewis Gotthilf Günther (3 October 1830 – 1 February 1914), was a German-born British zoologist, ichthyologist, and herpetologist. Günther is ranked the second-most productive re ...

described ''Ambassis marianus'' in 1880 from a specimen collected from the Mary River near the village of Tiaro, some twenty miles upstream from Maryborough, on an expedition in May 1874.

William John Macleay Sir William John Macleay (13 June 1820 – 7 December 1891) was a Scottish-Australian politician, Natural history, naturalist, zoologist, and Herpetology, herpetologist. Early life Macleay was born at Wick, Highland, Wick, Caithness, Scotland, ...

described a specimen from Port Jackson (Sydney) as ''Pseudoambassis ramsayi''. Charles Walter De Vis described ''Pseudoambassis convexus'' from a Queensland specimen in 1884. Both of these are now regarded as synonyms of ''Ambassis marianus''. This species and the co-occurring Port Jackson glassfish ('' A. jacksoniensis'') are the only two members of the genus found in temperate waters. The others are found in the waters of northern Australia and southeast Asia.

Distribution and habitat

It is native to coastal eastern Australia, from Maryborough in central Queensland through to

Narooma Narooma is a town in the Australian state of New South Wales on the far south coast. The town is on the Princes Highway, which crosses the Wagonga Inlet to North Narooma. The heritage town of Central Tilba is nearby to the south. The name Naro ...

in southern New South Wales. It lives in estuaries and protected brackish tidal streams that have mangroves growing along the margins.

Ecology

A controlled study comparing six native fish species with the introduced (and invasive)

eastern mosquitofish The eastern mosquitofish (''Gambusia holbrooki'') is a species of freshwater fish, closely related to the western mosquitofish, ''Gambusia affinis''. It is a member of the family Poeciliidae of order Cyprinodontiformes. The eastern mosquitofish ...

(''Gambusia holbrooki'') on consuming larvae of the common banded mosquito (''

Culex annulirostris ''Culex annulirostris'', commonly known as the common banded mosquito, is an insect native to Australia, Fiji, Micronesia, the Philippines and Indonesia. It is regarded as a serious pest species throughout its range. Frederick Askew Skuse desc ...

'') in Brisbane found that the estuary glassfish was as efficient at eating mosquito larvae as the eastern mosquitofish and is a good candidate for mosquito control.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q3767389

marianus Marianus is a male name, formerly an Ancient Roman family name, derived from Marius. Marianus may refer to: *Marianus of Auxerre (died 462 or 473), French monk and saint * Marianus Scotus of Mainz (1028–1082 or -83), otherwise Máel Brigte (Devo ...

Freshwater fish of Australia Fish described in 1880 Taxa named by Albert Günther