The Florida bass (''Micropterus floridanus'') is a species of freshwater

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fishes, is a class of bony fish. They comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. The ray-finned fishes are so called because their fins are webs of skin supported by bony or h ...

, a

black bass Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white have o ...

belonging to the sunfish

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Centrarchidae Centrarchidae, better known as sunfishes, is a family of freshwater ray-finned fish belonging to the order Perciformes (formerly belonging to the deprecated order Centrarchiformes), native only to North America. There are eight universally i ...

of order

Perciformes Perciformes (), also called the Percomorpha or Acanthopteri, is an order or superorder of ray-finned fish. If considered a single order, they are the most numerous order of vertebrates, containing about 41% of all bony fish. Perciformes means ...

. It is found in the southeastern United States.

Taxonomy

The Florida bass was first formally described in 1822 as ''Cichla floridana'' by the French naturalist

Charles Alexandre Lesueur Charles Alexandre Lesueur (1 January 1778 in Le Havre – 12 December 1846 in Le Havre) was a French naturalist, artist, and explorer. He was a prolific natural-history collector, gathering many type specimens in Australia, Southeast Asia, ...

with the type locality given as Eastern Florida. It was considered to be conspecific with the

largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, bu ...

(''M. salmoides''), albeit as a subspecies, however, more recently it has been treated as a valid species. A 2022 phylogenomic study supported its status as a valid species but found that it was more widespread than previously thought. In fact the type locality of ''M. salmoides'' was found to be within the range of ''M. floridanus'' and this means that the species described as ''M. salmoides'' by Bernard Germain de Lacépède in 1802 was the Florida bass and not the largemouth bass. If this is the case then the correct binomial for the Florida bass is ''M. salmoides'' with ''M. floridanus'' as a junior synonym. The largemouth bass is renamed ''M. nigricans'' (Cuvier, 1822), which has a type locality of Lake Huron which is within the range of the largemouth bass.

Description

The Florida bass resembles the largemouth bass in that it has an elongate body that varies in color from a silvery-white to brassy-green and sometimes to a pale brown in murkier waters. The coloration forms a camouflaged patternas there is a mottling of dark olive mottling along the upper body and a wide black stripe that is normally split into a line of blotches and greenish-black spotss along the flank. The

caudal fin 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 ...

has a sooty black margin which is more obcious in juveniles. The mouth is large, the upper jaw extends to the rear beyond the eye in adults and there are no teeth on the tongue. There are between 9 and 11 spines in the dorsal fin and 3 spines in the anal fin. The Florida bass is slightly larger, with a length of up to , than the more northerly largemouth bass and differs in some scale counts.

Distribution and habitat

The Florida bass was thought to be restricted to

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

but a

phylogenomic Phylogenomics is the intersection of the fields of evolution and genomics. The term has been used in multiple ways to refer to analysis that involves genome data and evolutionary reconstructions. It is a group of techniques within the larger fields ...

study found that it was widespread in coastal river systems of the southeastern United States from Florida north to the

Cape Fear River The Cape Fear River is a long blackwater river in east central North Carolina. It flows into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Fear, from which it takes its name. The river is formed at the confluence of the Haw River and the Deep River (North Carol ...

in North Carolina. The Florida bass has been introduced to Nevada, alongside the largemouth bass, and into the range of the largemouth bass. Where the species mix the introgression of Florida bass genes can be very quick. Like the largemouth bass, Florida bass, can be found in a wide variety of waterbodies, it occurs in large lakes, rivers, and reservoirs, to smaller waterbodies such as swamps, ponds, and creek pools. Although this species may prosper in many aquatic environments, it tends to be most numerous in warm, densely vegetated

eutrophic Eutrophication is the process by which an entire body of water, or parts of it, becomes progressively enriched with minerals and nutrients, particularly nitrogen and phosphorus. It has also been defined as "nutrient-induced increase in phytoplan ...

lakes, rivers and reservoirs. They are commonly found along shallow shorelines, and they are most frequently found around logs, rocks and beds of aquatic plants.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5614655

Florida bass The Florida bass (''Micropterus floridanus'') is a species of freshwater ray-finned fish, a black bass belonging to the sunfish family (biology), family Centrarchidae of order (biology), order Perciformes. It is found in the southeastern United St ...

Fish described in 1822