Hydrolagus colliei (Lay & Bennett 1839)

Angulo, Arturo, López, Myrna I., Bussing, William A. & Murase, Atsunobu, 2014, Records of chimaeroid fishes (Holocephali: Chimaeriformes) from the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, with the description of a new species of Chimera (Chimaeridae) from the eastern Pacific Ocean, Zootaxa 3861 (6), pp. 554-574 : 566-568

Hydrolagus colliei (Lay & Bennett 1839)

Spotted Ratfish; Quimera manchada (Spanish)

( Figure 6 , Table 4 )

Material examined. 3 specimens. UCR 2909–04, 2 males, 1 female, 469–495 mm TL, 265–329 mm BDL; 44.95 Km , 253.73 ° T from Cabo Blanco, Puntarenas, Costa Rica (9º26'16.44" N, 85º29'56.04" W), 560–620 m, 24 November 2010, collected by J.M. Carvajal.

Diagnosis. Snout short and bluntly rounded; oral and preopercular lateral line canals not sharing a short common branch from the infraorbital canal; anterior edge of dorsal-fin spine not serrated; anterior and posterior regions of second dorsal-fin considerably taller than middle region; pectoral fins when depressed not reaches beyond to origin of pelvic fins; anal fin absent; caudal-fin axis horizontal with the fin nearly symmetrical, epaxial and hypaxial lobes equal sized; brown or reddish brown coloration with small white spots on head and trunk. Morphometric measurements, expressed as percentage of body length (% BDL) or head length (% HDL), and comparative data are presented in Table 4 .

Distribution. Northeastern Pacific: west coast of North America from southwestern Alaska to Baja California, Mexico, including the Gulf of California ( Baldwin 1961, Krupp & Bussing 1995, González-Acosta et al. 1999, Didier & Rosenberger 2002, Ebert 2003, Mecklenburg et al. 2002, Didier et al. 2012), and Costa Rica (this study), at depths between 0 and about 900 m ( Didier et al. 2012).

Remarks. These specimens represent a south range extension of about 3500 Km on known distribution, as the southernmost record of the spotted Ratfish was on Punta Prieta off the outer coast of the Baja California Peninsula, Mexico (26°59’N, 114°02’W) (González-Acosta et al. 1999, Ruiz-Campos et al. 2010).

Figures

FIGURE 6. Hydrolagus colliei (Lay & Bennett 1839), UCR 2909–04, male, 469 mm TL, 265 mm BDL, collected in Costa Rica.