Photographic catalog of otoliths of marine and freshwater fish from Peru

Abstract

The three pairs of otoliths of 222 osseous fish species comprising 177 marine and 45 freshwater species are reported. The fish were acquired mainly at the Fish Terminal of Villa María del Triunfo (Lima) and on a smaller scale from the Santa Eulalia Fish Station (Huarochiri) managed by the National University Federico Villarreal (UNFV) and donations were also received from aquariums of the capital. The total length of the fishes was taken in centimeters with an approximation to the nearest millimeter. The left sagitta otoliths were measured longitudinally in millimeters and photographed by their internal face. The extraction of the otoliths was carried out in the Hydrobiology Laboratory I of the Faculty of Oceanography, Fisheries, Food Sciences and Aquaculture of the UNFV, it was carried out by the basioccipital bone scraping method. It was determined that the specie that proportionally has the three largest pairs of otoliths was Stellifer minor (Tschudi, 1846) “minor stardrum” of the family Sciaenidae, and the smallest were of Hippocampus ingens Girard, 1858 “seahorse” of the family Syngnathidae. Conservation of species in formaldehyde affected the integrity of otoliths, but not so in preservation done in ethyl alcohol. The families Loricariidae (catfish) and Coryphaenidae (dolphinfish or mahi-mahi) gave more work to the extraction due to its compact cranial structure. This work covered 18.43% of the bony marine fish reported for Peruvian waters.