Author: Reinhardt, 1837
Benthosema glaciale Reinhardt, 1837
Status in World Register of Marine Species:
Accepted name: Benthosema glaciale (Reinhardt, 1837) (updated 2009-06-25)
Diagnosis: dorsal finrays 13 (12-14); anal finrays 17-18 (19); pectoral finrays 11 (10); gillrakers 5 (6) + 1 + 12 (11-13), total 18 (17-20). AO 6 (5) + 6 (5-7), total 12 (11-13). Males with single black-bordered supracaudal gland; females with two infra-caudal luminous patches; occasional specimens with both. Size: to 103 mm.
Habitat: high-oceanic, mesopelagic. Mediterranean: day at 375-800 m (maximum abundance at 500 m); night at 12-200 m and at 600 800 m (maximum abundance at 45-70 m). Atlantic: day at 275- 850 m; nyctoepipelagic at surface and down to 225 m (maximum abundance at 25 and 75 m). Non-migrants include all developmental stages. Food: mainly t calanoid copepods; also euphausiids and in small specimens copepodites. Reproduction: caudal glands develop in both sexes from about 25 mm; sexually mature from about 30 mm. Spawning peak (Mediterranean) in late spring-summer with east-to-west progression. Spawns both north and south of the Polar Fronts in the eastern North Atlantic.
Distribution: endemic Mediterranean (mainly western basin) and Atlantic. North temperate pattern (boreoarctic subpattern); between about 80° and 37° N in eastern sector, but with disjunct southern extension between 18° and 11°N, and isolates from Gibraltar to the Mauritanian upwelling region along the edge of the continental shelf; 40° N southern limit in western sector.
Eggs, larvae and young stages. Ehrenbaum, 1909: 355, fig. 135 | Tåning, 1918: 31, fig. 11, 13-14 | Sanzo, 1918d: 33 | Roule and Angel, 1930: 45, pl. 2 (fig. 51) | Tortonese, 1956d: 939, fig. 813 | Moser and Ahlström, 1974: 397, fig. 3a, b.
Otoliths (sagitta). Gaemers and Schwazhans, 1973: 209, pl. 1, fig. 1a-b, pl. 10, fig. 10.