The small-mouth righteye flounder (''Nematops microstoma'') is a flatfish of the family Pleuronectidae. It is a demersal fish that lives on

saltwater Saline water (more commonly known as salt water) is water that contains a high concentration of dissolved salts (mainly sodium chloride). On the United States Geological Survey (USGS) salinity scale, saline water is saltier than brackish water, ...

bottoms from depths of . Its natural habitat is the

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

waters of the southwest

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 contine ...

. It can grow up to in length.

Range

As of 2011 the small-mouth righteye flounder has been discovered at only two locations, both in the southwest Pacific: the

Admiralty Islands The Admiralty Islands are an archipelago group of 18 islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the South Pacific Ocean. These are also sometimes called the Manus Islands, after the largest island. These rainforest-co ...

, where it was first described by Albert Günther in 1880, and the Gilbert Islands.

Description

The large-scale right-eye flounder is, as its name suggests, a right-eyed flatfish. It has a slender body, 2.3 times long as it is wide, with a short

pectoral 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 ...

Diet

The diet of the large-scale right-eye flounder consists of small

zoobenthos Benthos (), also known as benthon, is the community of organisms that live on, in, or near the bottom of a sea, river, lake, or stream, also known as the benthic zone.Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''μικρὸς'' (''mikros''), meaning "small", and ''στόμα'' (''stoma''), meaning "mouth".

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:flounder, righteye, small-mouth small-mouth righteye flounder small-mouth righteye flounder small-mouth righteye flounder