Hippocampus bargibanti

Pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti )

The Pygmy seahorse (Hippocampus bargibanti ) is ( H. denise ) after Denise dwarf seahorse is the second smallest known seahorse. The animals were discovered in 1969 by Georges Bargibant when he collected for the aquarium gorgonian in Noumea.

Dissemination and lifestyle

Dwarf seahorses live in the coral reefs of the Western Pacific from the Philippines, Indonesia on New Guinea, the Great Barrier Reef up to New Caledonia. You keep always well camouflaged in sea fans, mostly of the genus Muricella, at depths of ten to fifty meters. The dwarf seahorses live in small groups and keep themselves with the tail on the gorgonian fixed since the habitat of the coral is always a strong current.

Features

Dwarf seahorses are only two inches long. Your body is covered with wart-like tubercles, which are usually darker and the polyps of the coral are similar ( mimesis ). There are two color forms. Animals that inhabit the rotpolypige gorgonian Muricella plectana have a light gray body and red tubercles, living in Muricella paraplectana dwarf seahorses are yellow with orange tubercles. In this seahorse gill openings are merged to form a single outlet opening which is centered at the back. In the males were found in anatomical studies no evidence of a brood pouch. Instead, eggs and embryos likely to develop in the body of the female, which are thus viviparous.

System

The Australian ichthyologist JE Randall believed that the Pygmy Seahorse with the closely related Denise dwarf seahorses ( denise hippocampus) and another smaller, some previously undescribed species forms a monophyletic group, the " bargibanti species complex", which after a revision seahorses should be placed in a new genus to be drawn up.