Umbra (genus)

Hungarian dog fish ( Umbra krameri )

The dog fish ( Umbra ) are small relative of the pike ( Esocidae ). Your body is stockier than its relatives. Head and trunk are covered with large roundhouse. The caudal fin is rounded. The 8 to 33 -inch-long fish feed on small invertebrates such as insects, crustaceans and molluscs.

You have a scattered distribution area and live in North America in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River and in rivers that flow from the Appalachian Mountains to the Atlantic. With the Hungarian dog fish ( Umbra krameri ) there is also a representative in Europe. He comes in the area of ​​the Danube, from Vienna to the mouth, and the Dniester river before. The preferred habitat of the dog fish consists of small, strong weedy waters. They breathe with their swim bladder atmospheric air. The gills can not meet their oxygen demand in oxygen-rich waters. Dog fish from their spawning place between aquatic plants and roots. The nest is guarded by the male.

Dog fish have a very different number of chromosomes ( 22-78 ).

Fins formula: Dorsal 13-17, 7-10 Anal, pectoral 11-16, Ventral 5-7

Fossil knows one dog fish from the lower Eocene of Europe and the Oligocene of North America. With Umbra perpusilla from the Miocene of Oehningen in Württemberg they also occurred in Germany. Extrapolating also Dallia and Novumbra to Umbridae, this family is probably paraphyletic.

Species

• Hungarian dog fish ( Umbra krameri Walbaum, 1792)
• American dog fish ( Umbra limi ( Kirtland, 1840) )
• Small dog fish ( Umbra pygmaea ( DeKay, 1842) ), introduced from the eastern United States in northern Germany.