Author: Lowe, 1843
Echiostoma barbatum Lowe, 1843
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Echiostoma barbatum Lowe, 1843 (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: body moderately long, its depth less than 10 times in SL. Head with short, blunt, rounded snout; lower jaw not longer than upper jaw, not curved strongly upward. Barbel shorter than head, up to about of head length (or 16% SL), its tip changing with growth from a large and a small bulb with a distal group of filaments in small specimens to a slender, tapering end, lacking bulbs and with filaments often along its sides, as well as at the tip. Pectoral fin with one long ray distinctly separated from three short rays, all unbranched distally and without lumps of luminous material; pelvic fins low on body, their insertions close together near mid-ventral line; bases of dorsal and anal fins about equally long their origins approximately opposed; no dorsal adipose fin. Photophores in ventral row between pectoral fin and pelvic fin insertions (PV) 25-28; post-orbital luminous organ large, half as long as, to considerably longer than, eye diameter, more or less triangular in shape; no pre-orbital ol sub-orbital organ; no large patches of luminous material on head behinc eye. Colour: head and body black, no pale loops or lines on flanks. Size: to almost 37 cm.
Habitat, etc.: see family.
Distribution: northward to about 42° N; not in Mediterranean. Elsewhere, widespread in the Atlantic from about 36° N to 40° S, including Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean; also, Indian and Pacific Oceans.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Beebe and Crane, 1939: 139 | Morrow, 1964: 484-485.
Otoliths (sagitta). No data.