West Indian Ocean coelacanth

West Indian Ocean coelacanth
Temporal range: Ionian-Holocene,[1] 0.02–0 Ma
↓
CITES Appendix I (CITES)[3]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Sarcopterygii
Class: Actinistia
Order: Coelacanthiformes
Family: Latimeriidae
Genus: Latimeria
Species:
L. chalumnae
Binomial name
Latimeria chalumnae
L. chalumnae range in red
Synonyms[4][5]
  • Malania anjouanae Smith, 1953
  • Latimeria anjouanae (Smith, 1953)

The West Indian Ocean coelacanth[6] (Latimeria chalumnae) (sometimes known as gombessa,[2][7] African coelacanth,[8] or simply coelacanth[9]) is a crossopterygian,[10] one of two extant species of coelacanth, a rare order of vertebrates more closely related to lungfish and tetrapods than to the common ray-finned fishes. The other extant species is the Indonesian coelacanth (L. menadoensis).

The West Indian Ocean coelacanth was historically known by fishermen around the Comoro Islands (where it is known as gombessa), Madagascar, and Mozambique in the western Indian Ocean,[11] but first scientifically recognised from a specimen collected in South Africa in 1938.

This coelacanth was once thought to be evolutionarily conservative, but discoveries have shown initial morphological diversity.[12] It has a vivid blue pigment, and is the better known of the two extant species. The species has been assessed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List.[2]

  1. ^ Brouwers L (February 6, 2012). "Coelacanths are not living fossils. Like the rest of us, they evolve". Scientific American Blog Network. Scientific American.
  2. ^ a b c Musick JA (2000). "Latimeria chalumnae". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2000: e.T11375A3274618. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2000.RLTS.T11375A3274618.en. Retrieved 19 February 2022.
  3. ^ "Appendices | CITES". cites.org. Retrieved 2022-01-14.
  4. ^ "Part 7- Vertebrates". Collection of genus-group names in a systematic arrangement. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 30 June 2016.
  5. ^ Haaramo M (2007). "Coelacanthiformes – Latimeria-like coelacanths". Mikko's Phylogeny Archive. Retrieved 3 July 2016.
  6. ^ Wägele H, Klussmann-Kolb A, Kuhlmann M, Haszprunar G, Lindberg D, Koch A, Wägele JW (October 2011). "The taxonomist - an endangered race. A practical proposal for its survival". Frontiers in Zoology. 8 (1): 25. doi:10.1186/1742-9994-8-25. PMC 3210083. PMID 22029904.
  7. ^ Bruton MN (2018). The annotated Old fourlegs : the updated story of the coelacanth. Gainesville. ISBN 978-0813064642. OCLC 1006479644.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ^ Amemiya CT, Alföldi J, Lee AP, Fan S, Philippe H, Maccallum I, et al. (April 2013). "The African coelacanth genome provides insights into tetrapod evolution". Nature. 496 (7445): 311–6. Bibcode:2013Natur.496..311A. doi:10.1038/nature12027. PMC 3633110. PMID 23598338.
  9. ^ Froese R, Pauly D (eds.). "Latimeria chalumnae". FishBase. February 2018 version.
  10. ^ Locket, N. A. (1973). "Retinal Structure in Latimeria chalumnae". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 266 (881): 493–518. Bibcode:1973RSPTB.266..493L. doi:10.1098/rstb.1973.0054. ISSN 0080-4622. JSTOR 2417305. PMID 4148821.
  11. ^ Fricke, H.; Hissmann, K. (2000-03-28). "Feeding ecology and evolutionary survival of the living coelacanth Latimeria chalumnae". Marine Biology. 136 (2): 379–386. Bibcode:2000MarBi.136..379F. doi:10.1007/s002270050697. ISSN 0025-3162. S2CID 84173448.
  12. ^ Gess, Robert W.; Coates, Michael I. (October 2015). "Fossil juvenile coelacanths from the Devonian of South Africa shed light on the order of character acquisition in actinistians: Fossil Coelacanths from the South African Devonian". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 175 (2): 360–383. doi:10.1111/zoj.12276.