Miller Lake lamprey
Entosphenus minimus ( Syn: Lampetra minima, English common name: Miller Lake Lamprey ) is a Neunaugenart, which is endemic in some outflows of Miller Lakes in Klamath County in the U.S. state of Oregon. She used to directly home in Miller Lake; there it has been but eradicated by targeted use of pesticides already in 1958.
Description
Entosphenus minimus is the smallest Neunaugenart having a length from 72 to 129 millimeters. The suction mouth is equipped with thirteen to seventeen horn teeth. The core muscles usually consists of 60 to 65 muscle sections.
Way of life
The eyes and toothless Querder ( larvae) to keep in the soft sediment of the water bottom and filter detritus and plankton from the water flowing past. After about five years, they undergo a metamorphosis and live parasitically as adults by sucking the blood of living fish.
Status
Entosphenus minimus was 1958-1992 as extinct or lost. Since the lampreys in his outstretched brood ( finger long young fish ) parasitized trout, they were regarded by the fish farmers on Miller Lake as a pest and fought with pesticides such as toxaphene. It was first probably not aware that it is a only here occurring own way of lampreys. It has long been assumed then that the only population had been occurred in Lake Miller and wiped out by pesticides. But in 1992, a full-grown specimen of this species was rediscovered in the headwaters of the Williamson River. For further search in the 1990s, it turned out that the lamprey populations in the Miller Creek, Jack Creek and the River Sycan also belong to the minimus type Entosphenus.
After the rediscovery of the previously " extinct " as a kind classified by the IUCN Red List was placed in the category " DD " ( insufficient data ) for the time being.