| Bowfin | |
|---|---|
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| Bowfin in aquarium | |
Scientific classification 
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| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Clade: | Halecomorphi |
| Order: | Amiiformes |
| Family: | Amiidae |
| Genus: | Amia |
| Species: | A. calva
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| Binomial name | |
| Amia calva Linnaeus, 1766
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| Synonyms[3][4] | |
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Species
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The bowfin (Amia calva) is a bony fish, native to North America. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, grindle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. It is regarded as a relict, being one of only two surviving species of the Halecomorphi, a group of fish that first appeared during the Early Triassic, around 250 million years ago. The bowfin is often considered a "living fossil" because they have retained some morphological characteristics of their early ancestors. It is one of two species in the genus Amia, along with Amia ocellicauda,[5] the eyespot bowfin. The closest living relatives of bowfins are gars, with the two groups being united in the clade Holostei.
Bowfins are demersal freshwater piscivores, commonly found throughout much of the eastern United States,[2] and in southern Ontario and Quebec. Fossil deposits indicate Amiiformes were once widespread in both freshwater and marine environments across North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Africa. Now, their range is limited to much of the eastern United States and adjacent southern Canada, including the drainage basins of the Mississippi River, Great Lakes, and various rivers exiting in the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf of Mexico. Their preferred habitat includes vegetated sloughs, lowland rivers and lakes, swamps, and backwater areas; they are also occasionally found in brackish water. They are stalking, ambush predators known to move into the shallows at night to prey on fish and aquatic invertebrates such as crawfish, mollusks, and aquatic insects.
Like gars, bowfin are bimodal breathers—they have the capacity to breathe both water and air. Their gills exchange gases in the water allowing them to breathe, but they also have a gas bladder that serves to maintain buoyancy, and also allows them to breathe air by means of a small pneumatic duct connected from the foregut to the gas bladder. They can break the surface to gulp air, which allows them to survive conditions of aquatic hypoxia that would be lethal to most other species. The bowfin is long-lived, with age up to 33 years reported.[6]
- ^ NatureServe (2013). "Amia calva". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2013: e.T201942A2730796. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2013-1.RLTS.T201942A2730796.en. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
- ^ a b "Amia calva". NatureServe Explorer An online encyclopedia of life. 7.1. NatureServe. Retrieved 3 December 2023.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Froese-Pauly-2017-fbwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Cite error: The named reference
Deeplyfish-2017-05-Amiidaewas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Brownstein, C.D.; Kim, D.; Orr, O.D.; Hogue, G.M.; Tracy, B.H.; Pugh, M.W.; Singer, R.; Myles-McBurney, C.; et al. (27 July 2022). "Hidden species diversity in a living fossil vertebrate". Biology Letters. 18 (11). bioRxiv 10.1101/2022.07.25.500718. doi:10.1098/rsbl.2022.0395. PMC 9709656. PMID 36448369. S2CID 251162051. Art. No. 20220395.
- ^ Lackmann, Alec R.; Bielak-Lackmann, Ewelina S.; Butler, Malcolm G.; Clark, Mark E. (2022-08-23). "Otoliths suggest lifespans more than 30 years for free-living Bowfin Amia calva – implications for fisheries management in the bowfishing era". Journal of Fish Biology. 101 (5): 1301–1311. Bibcode:2022JFBio.101.1301L. doi:10.1111/jfb.15201. ISSN 0022-1112. PMC 9826520. PMID 36053840.