The sunfish Mola mola is the world’s largest oceanic
bony fish, found in subtropical and tropical oceans. It spends most of its time
feeding on jellyfish in deeper waters. When it surfaces, it’s either for
thermal recharging or to seek help to eliminate parasites, e.g., from the albatross.
The sunfish lies parallel to the water surface to allow the black-footed
albatross Phoebastria immutabilis to
feed on the copepod attached near the base of its dorsal fin. The copepod
belongs to the genus Pennella, and
one of the 40 ecto-parasites (écto’ from Late Greek ‘ekto’, meaning outside) identified
to inhabit the sunfish’s skin.[1]
Learn more about these
species from FishBase and SeaLifeBase.
[1] Abe, T., and K. Sekiguchi, 2012. Why does the ocean
sunfish bask? Commun. Integr. Biol. 5(4): 395-398.
Written by:
No comments:
Post a Comment
What do you think? Share your thoughts with us.