Coachwhip trevally
Encyclopedia
The coachwhip trevally, Carangoides oblongus (also known as the oblong trevally and oblique-banded trevally) is a species
of inshore marine
fish
classified in the jack family Carangidae
. The coachwhip trevally is distributed through the Indo-west Pacific
region, ranging from South Africa
in the west to Fiji
and Japan
in the east. It is a moderately large fish, growing to a known maximum length of 46 cm and can be distinguished from similar species by an array of detailed morphological features including dentition
, fin ray counts and scale
patterns. The coachwhip trevally inhabits coastal waters throughout its range, known to prefer estuarine waters in a number of localities. Nothing is known of its diet or reproductive biology, and is of little importance to fisheries, occasionally taken as bycatch in trawl and hook and line fisheries.
, a group of fish commonly called jacks and trevallies. Carangoides falls into the jack and horse mackerel family Carangidae
, itself part the order Perciformes
, in the suborder Percoidei
.
The species was first scientifically described by the French naturalist
Georges Cuvier
in 1833 based on a specimen taken from the waters of New Guinea
which was designated to be the holotype
. Cuvier named this new species Caranx oblongus, placing it in a related genus of jacks
with the specific epithet meaning 'oblong' in reference to the species shape. Over time, it was reclassified first into the now invalid genus Carangichthys and finally into Carangoides where it has remained. The species was also independently redescribed and classified several times, first as Caranx auriga by Charles De Vis, Citula gracilis by William Ogilby
and as Caranx tanakai by Yojiro Wakiya. These names all were applied after Cuvier's initial, correct naming making them junior synonyms under ICZN
rules, rendering them invalid. The common names applied to the species are descriptive, with the name 'coachwhip trevally' in allusion to the elongated, whip
-like dorsal fin lobe.
, Carangoides dinema, which it also resembles in having a 'shadowed' appearance under its second dorsal fin
. It can be distinguished from C. dinema by fin ray and lateral line
scale and scute
counts. It has a compressed, oblong
body with the dorsal profile more convex than the ventral profile, with the head profile also slightly convex. The dorsal fin is divided into two distinct sections, the first containing 8 spines, while the second consists of 1 spine and 20 to 22 soft rays, with the lobe of this second fin being elongate and longer than the head length. The anal fin consists of 2 anteriorly detached spines followed by 1 spine attached to 18 or 19 soft rays, while the pelvic fin has 1 spine followed by 18 or 19 soft rays. The lateral line
has a moderate anterior arch, with the chord of this arch slightly shorter than the straight section, another feature which separates C. oblongus from C. dinema. The curved section of the lateral line has 60 to 69 scales
while the straight section has 0 to 2 scales and 37 to 42 scutes. The breast is scaleless, reaching ventrally to the pelvic fin origin, while laterally the naked breast is separated from the naked base of the pectoral fins by a band of scales. Both jaw
s contain bands of small teeth, with the bands becoming wider anteriorly. The upper jaw also hosts an irregular series of moderately large outer teeth, with the largest specimens showing this in the lower jaw as well. There are 26 to 30 gill raker
s and 24 vertebrae.
The coachwhip trevally is a dusky olive green colour above, fading to a silvery white or yellow below with small blue to black blotches present on the dorsal line between the bases of the second
dorsal fin rays. The upper caudal and soft dorsal fins are dusky blue, while the anal fin is yellow having white lobe tips. The pelvic and pectoral fins are yellow. There is a diffuse dark opercular
blotch, which may be absent altogether.
and west Pacific Ocean
s. In the Indian Ocean, the species ranges from South Africa
and Madagascar
in the west, northward to the Gulf of Aden
, but no records exist of captures in the Red Sea
or further north until India
and Sri Lanka
. In the eastern Indian Ocean, it is known from China
, South East Asia, Indonesia
and northern Australia
. In the Pacific its range extends from Papua New Guinea
north to Taiwan
and Japan
and east to New Caledonia
and Fiji
.
The coachwhip trevally is known to inhabit coastal waters throughout its range. The few times it has been recorded in thorough species surveys it generally appears as juveniles in estuaries, with this found in surveys around Australia, Fiji and the Solomon Islands
. Adults also inhabit estuaries, but adults possibly move into bay
s and over shallow reef
s.
Species
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of inshore marine
Marine (ocean)
Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...
fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate 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...
classified in the jack family Carangidae
Carangidae
Carangidae is a family of fish which includes the jacks, pompanos, jack mackerels, and scads.They are marine fish found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans...
. The coachwhip trevally is distributed through the Indo-west Pacific
Indo-Pacific
The Indo-Pacific is a biogeographic region of the Earth's seas, comprising the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the seas connecting the two in the general area of Indonesia...
region, ranging from South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
in the west to Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
in the east. It is a moderately large fish, growing to a known maximum length of 46 cm and can be distinguished from similar species by an array of detailed morphological features including dentition
Dentition
Dentition pertains to the development of teeth and their arrangement in the mouth. In particular, the characteristic arrangement, kind, and number of teeth in a given species at a given age...
, fin ray counts and scale
Scale (zoology)
In most biological nomenclature, a scale is a small rigid plate that grows out of an animal's skin to provide protection. In lepidopteran species, scales are plates on the surface of the insect wing, and provide coloration...
patterns. The coachwhip trevally inhabits coastal waters throughout its range, known to prefer estuarine waters in a number of localities. Nothing is known of its diet or reproductive biology, and is of little importance to fisheries, occasionally taken as bycatch in trawl and hook and line fisheries.
Taxonomy and naming
The coachwhip trevally is classified within the genus CarangoidesCarangoides
Carangoides is a genus of tropical to subtropical marine fishes in the jack family, Carangidae. They are small to large sized, deep bodied fish characterised by a certain gill raker and jaw morphology, often appearing very similar to jacks in the genus Caranx...
, a group of fish commonly called jacks and trevallies. Carangoides falls into the jack and horse mackerel family Carangidae
Carangidae
Carangidae is a family of fish which includes the jacks, pompanos, jack mackerels, and scads.They are marine fish found in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans...
, itself part the order Perciformes
Perciformes
The Perciformes, also called the Percomorphi or Acanthopteri, is one of the largest orders of vertebrates, containing about 40% of all bony fish. Perciformes means perch-like. They belong to the class of ray-finned fish and comprise over 7,000 species found in almost all aquatic environments...
, in the suborder Percoidei
Percoidei
Percoidei is one of eighteen suborders of bony fish in the order Perciformes. Many commercially harvested fish species are contained in this suborder, including the snappers, jacks, whitings, groupers, bass, perches and porgies.-Divisions:...
.
The species was first scientifically described by the French naturalist
Naturalist
Naturalist may refer to:* Practitioner of natural history* Conservationist* Advocate of naturalism * Naturalist , autobiography-See also:* The American Naturalist, periodical* Naturalism...
Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
in 1833 based on a specimen taken from the waters of New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
which was designated to be the holotype
Holotype
A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...
. Cuvier named this new species Caranx oblongus, placing it in a related genus of jacks
Caranx
Caranx is a genus of tropical to subtropical marine fish in the jack family Carangidae, commonly known as jacks, trevallies and kingfishes. They are moderate to large sized, deep bodied fishes which are distinguished from other carangid genera by specific gill raker, fin ray and dentition...
with the specific epithet meaning 'oblong' in reference to the species shape. Over time, it was reclassified first into the now invalid genus Carangichthys and finally into Carangoides where it has remained. The species was also independently redescribed and classified several times, first as Caranx auriga by Charles De Vis, Citula gracilis by William Ogilby
William Ogilby
William Ogilby was an Irish barrister and naturalist.Ogilby was honorary secretary of the Zoological Society of London from 1839 to 1846....
and as Caranx tanakai by Yojiro Wakiya. These names all were applied after Cuvier's initial, correct naming making them junior synonyms under ICZN
International Code of Zoological Nomenclature
The International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is a widely accepted convention in zoology that rules the formal scientific naming of organisms treated as animals...
rules, rendering them invalid. The common names applied to the species are descriptive, with the name 'coachwhip trevally' in allusion to the elongated, whip
Whip
A whip is a tool traditionally used by humans to exert control over animals or other people, through pain compliance or fear of pain, although in some activities whips can be used without use of pain, such as an additional pressure aid in dressage...
-like dorsal fin lobe.
Description
The coachwhip trevally is a moderately large fish, known to grow to a known maximum length of 46 cm. It is similar in shape to most other carangids, especially the shadow trevallyShadow trevally
The shadow trevally, Carangoides dinema is a species of inshore marine fish in the jack family Carangidae...
, Carangoides dinema, which it also resembles in having a 'shadowed' appearance under its second dorsal fin
Dorsal fin
A dorsal fin is a fin located on the backs of various unrelated marine and freshwater vertebrates, including most fishes, marine mammals , and the ichthyosaurs...
. It can be distinguished from C. dinema by fin ray and lateral line
Lateral line
The lateral line is a sense organ in aquatic organisms , used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. Lateral lines are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail...
scale and scute
Scute
A scute or scutum is a bony external plate or scale, as on the shell of a turtle, the skin of crocodilians, the feet of some birds or the anterior portion of the mesonotum in insects.-Properties:...
counts. It has a compressed, oblong
Rectangle
In Euclidean plane geometry, a rectangle is any quadrilateral with four right angles. The term "oblong" is occasionally used to refer to a non-square rectangle...
body with the dorsal profile more convex than the ventral profile, with the head profile also slightly convex. The dorsal fin is divided into two distinct sections, the first containing 8 spines, while the second consists of 1 spine and 20 to 22 soft rays, with the lobe of this second fin being elongate and longer than the head length. The anal fin consists of 2 anteriorly detached spines followed by 1 spine attached to 18 or 19 soft rays, while the pelvic fin has 1 spine followed by 18 or 19 soft rays. The lateral line
Lateral line
The lateral line is a sense organ in aquatic organisms , used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. Lateral lines are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail...
has a moderate anterior arch, with the chord of this arch slightly shorter than the straight section, another feature which separates C. oblongus from C. dinema. The curved section of the lateral line has 60 to 69 scales
Scale (zoology)
In most biological nomenclature, a scale is a small rigid plate that grows out of an animal's skin to provide protection. In lepidopteran species, scales are plates on the surface of the insect wing, and provide coloration...
while the straight section has 0 to 2 scales and 37 to 42 scutes. The breast is scaleless, reaching ventrally to the pelvic fin origin, while laterally the naked breast is separated from the naked base of the pectoral fins by a band of scales. Both jaw
Jaw
The jaw is any opposable articulated structure at the entrance of the mouth, typically used for grasping and manipulating food. The term jaws is also broadly applied to the whole of the structures constituting the vault of the mouth and serving to open and close it and is part of the body plan of...
s contain bands of small teeth, with the bands becoming wider anteriorly. The upper jaw also hosts an irregular series of moderately large outer teeth, with the largest specimens showing this in the lower jaw as well. There are 26 to 30 gill raker
Gill raker
Gill rakers in fish are bony or cartilaginous processes that project from the branchial arch and are involved with filter feeding tiny prey. They are not to be confused with the gill filaments that compose the bony part of the gill. Rakers are usually present in two rows, projecting from both the...
s and 24 vertebrae.
The coachwhip trevally is a dusky olive green colour above, fading to a silvery white or yellow below with small blue to black blotches present on the dorsal line between the bases of the second
dorsal fin rays. The upper caudal and soft dorsal fins are dusky blue, while the anal fin is yellow having white lobe tips. The pelvic and pectoral fins are yellow. There is a diffuse dark opercular
Operculum (fish)
The operculum of a bony fish is the hard bony flap covering and protecting the gills. In most fish, the rear edge of the operculum roughly marks the division between the head and the body....
blotch, which may be absent altogether.
Distribution and habitat
The coachwhip trevally is distributed throughout the tropical and subtropical regions of the IndianIndian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
and west Pacific Ocean
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
s. In the Indian Ocean, the species ranges from South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
and Madagascar
Madagascar
The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...
in the west, northward to the Gulf of Aden
Gulf of Aden
The Gulf of Aden is located in the Arabian Sea between Yemen, on the south coast of the Arabian Peninsula, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. In the northwest, it connects with the Red Sea through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, which is about 20 miles wide....
, but no records exist of captures in the Red Sea
Red Sea
The Red Sea is a seawater inlet of the Indian Ocean, lying between Africa and Asia. The connection to the ocean is in the south through the Bab el Mandeb strait and the Gulf of Aden. In the north, there is the Sinai Peninsula, the Gulf of Aqaba, and the Gulf of Suez...
or further north until India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
. In the eastern Indian Ocean, it is known from China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
, South East Asia, Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and northern Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
. In the Pacific its range extends from Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
north to Taiwan
Taiwan
Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...
and Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and east to New Caledonia
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...
and Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...
.
The coachwhip trevally is known to inhabit coastal waters throughout its range. The few times it has been recorded in thorough species surveys it generally appears as juveniles in estuaries, with this found in surveys around Australia, Fiji and the Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands
Solomon Islands is a sovereign state in Oceania, east of Papua New Guinea, consisting of nearly one thousand islands. It covers a land mass of . The capital, Honiara, is located on the island of Guadalcanal...
. Adults also inhabit estuaries, but adults possibly move into bay
Bay
A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...
s and over shallow reef
Reef
In nautical terminology, a reef is a rock, sandbar, or other feature lying beneath the surface of the water ....
s.