Family : Syngnathidae
Text © Giuseppe Mazza
English translation by Mario Beltramini
Halfway between a seahorse and a pipefish, Amphelikturus dendreiticus, the pipefish of the western Atlantic , lives centered in the Caribbean © www.carlosestape.photoshelter.com
When the nature invents something, like for instance the aspirating pipette of the seahorses, the long tube born from the merging of the jaws, then transforms it adapting it to various species: gigantic and expandable expandable to the point of swallowing preys of its size in Aulostomus chinensis or long and thin in the pipefishes like Syngnathus acus or the seadragons like Phyllopteryx taeniolatus, where the crown on the head, typical of the seahorses, has in the meantime transformed in a jungle, rendering it similar to a vegetable.
And the prehensile tail, ignored by the pipefishes, gets back in fashion in the tiny Amphelikturus dendriticus (Barbour, 1905), called West Atlantic Pygmy Pipehorse.
The genus Amphelikturus, inserted in the family of the Syngnathidae, originates in fact from the Greek “ampheliktos”, rolled around, and “oura”, tail, whilst the specific term dendriticus, branched like a tree, evokes the abundance, not only on the head, of the characteristic filamentous appendages.
Maximum 8,1 cm long, it frequents the coralligenous, the detrital bottoms, the submerged prairies and the floating sargassum microcosm © www.carlosestape.photoshelter.com
The imaginative order of the Syngnathiformes shuffles the cards continuously counting with its variants more than 50 genera and 300 species. These are marine fishes, with some members frequenting brackish waters, like the Hippocampus guttulatus who well adapts to aquarium life, and rare freshwater species.
Zoogeography
Amphelikturus dendriticus lives substantially centered in the Caribbean.
In fact, it is present from New Brunswick, on the border with Canada, and the Bermudas up to north-eastern Brazil.
Ecology-Habitat
Displays various colours but is mainly characterized by the mimetic filamentous appendages scattered on the body © Linda Ianniello (on top) © www.carlosestape.photoshelter (below)
The West Atlantic pipefishes live demersal between 1 and 16 m in depth, where the preferred temperature is between 23,7 and 27,8 °C.
They frequent the coralligenous and the detrital bottoms but are mainly found stuck with their tail to the submerged seaweeds and to the phanerogams, motionless hoping that some invertebrate gets close to their relatively short aspiring tube. They also live in the microcosm of the floating sargassum, one say among other things for colonizing new environments, seeing their poor mobility.
Morphophysiology
Amphelikturus dendriticus may reach the length of 8,1 cm.
Couple. Note on the right the bulky poush of the male for brooding the eggs © Linda Ianniello
Like all seahorses and the pipefishes, it has no scales, and the body under the skin is armoured with bony plates. It has 13-15 rings on the trunk and others under the tail where the brood pouch of the males dominates.
The colour is very changeable, usually with dark spots on clear background, but some specimens are almost black, others yellow, tawny or reddish.
The pelvic fins are absent; the dorsal, that ensures, undulating, the locomotion, counts 15-18 rays and the anal 2.
Ethology-Reproductive Biology
Amphelikturus dendriticus is an oviparous species and the fecundation takes place in the pouch of the male.
Because of where it lives and the modest size, the populations trend is poorly known, but Amphelikturus dendriticus is not an endangered species © www.carlosestape.photoshelter.com
This, placed just under the anus, is formed by a big ventral pouch that unlike what happens usually in the seahorses is not sealed.
The resilience is good but has a minimum time for doubling the populations of less than 15 months and the fishing vulnerability, very low, marks only 10 on a scale of 100. Even if the the trend of the populations is poorly known are not known threats and since 2014 Amphelikturus dendriticus appears consequently as “LC, Least Concern” in the IUCN Red List of the endangered species.
Synonyms
Siphostoma dendriticum Barbour, 1905; Acentronura dendritica (Barbour, 1905).
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