The Mexican hogfish, ''Bodianus diplotaenia'', is a species of

wrasse The wrasses are a family, Labridae, of marine fish, many of which are brightly colored. The family is large and diverse, with over 600 species in 81 genera, which are divided into 9 subgroups or tribes. They are typically small, most of them le ...

native to the eastern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

. Adults inhabit rocky or coral areas at depths of 5–75 m. Sometimes, they are also found on sandy bottoms and where marine plants abound. They are solitary or form aggregations of only a few individuals. Mexican hogfish feed on

crabs Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" (abdomen) ( el, βραχύς , translit=brachys = short, / = tail), usually hidden entirely under the thorax. They live in all the ...

brittle stars Brittle stars, serpent stars, or ophiuroids (; ; referring to the serpent-like arms of the brittle star) are echinoderms in the class Ophiuroidea, closely related to starfish. They crawl across the sea floor using their flexible arms for locomot ...

mollusks Mollusca is the second-largest phylum of invertebrate animals after the Arthropoda, the members of which are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 85,000 extant species of molluscs are recognized. The number of fossil species is esti ...

, and

sea urchins Sea urchins () are spiny, globular echinoderms in the class Echinoidea. About 950 species of sea urchin live on the seabed of every ocean and inhabit every depth zone from the intertidal seashore down to . The spherical, hard shells (tests) of ...

. At night, they gather in cracks and crevices of rocks and caves to sleep. The Mexican hogfish starts life as a female, and later becomes a functional male. Males defend temporary reproductive territories called

leks A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. A lek can also indicate an avail ...

. The sex change may be due to local social conditions, but it may also have a genetic component, since the reversal occurs over a limited size range. They are

oviparous Oviparous animals are animals that lay their eggs, with little or no other embryonic development within the mother. This is the reproductive method of most fish, amphibians, most reptiles, and all pterosaurs, dinosaurs (including birds), and ...

, with distinct pairing during breeding.

Description

The body of the Mexican hogfish is robust and compressed. Large males have a pronounced hump between their eyes. The snout is pointed. They have a canine tooth at the rear of top jaw, and two pairs of strong canines at front of the top and bottom jaws. They have 10

dorsal fins A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through conv ...

and 12

anal fins Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as se ...

. Adult males have long filaments on their tail fin lobes and prolonged rays posteriorly on the

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage * Dorsal co ...

and

. They have 17 pectoral rays. The

lateral line The lateral line, also called the lateral line organ (LLO), is a system of sensory organs found in fish, used to detect movement, vibration, and pressure gradients in the surrounding water. The sensory ability is achieved via modified epithelial ...

is unbroken and smoothly arched. They have 31 large scales with pores on the

. The maximum size is up to 76 cm, the common size is up to 35 cm. In the initial phase, Mexican hogfish are reddish, grading to yellow on the posterior part of the body and the caudal fin. They have a pair of blackish stripes (may be broken) on the upper half of the side. Individual scale margins are brown to reddish. In the terminal phase, they are bluish green with a brown head (except for a white lower jaw) and a narrow yellowish bar on the middle of the side. Juveniles are similar to initial phase but with a yellow base color.

Distribution

They are found in the eastern

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the continen ...

Guadalupe Island Guadalupe Island ( es, Isla Guadalupe, link=no) is a volcanic island located off the western coast of Mexico's Baja California Peninsula and about southwest of the city of Ensenada in the state of Baja California, in the Pacific Ocean. The ...

and throughout the

Gulf of California The Gulf of California ( es, Golfo de California), also known as the Sea of Cortés (''Mar de Cortés'') or Sea of Cortez, or less commonly as the Vermilion Sea (''Mar Bermejo''), is a marginal sea of the Pacific Ocean that separates the Baja Ca ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, including the Cocos, Malpelo, Revillagigedo and the Galapagos islands.

References

External links

* * {{Taxonbar, from=Q1969047

Mexican hogfish The Mexican hogfish, ''Bodianus diplotaenia'', is a species of wrasse native to the eastern Pacific Ocean. Adults inhabit rocky or coral areas at depths of 5–75 m. Sometimes, they are also found on sandy bottoms and where marine plants abo ...

Taxa named by Theodore Gill Fish described in 1862