Blackspotted puffer - Citizendia

Blackspotted puffer

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Order:	Tetraodontiformes
Family:	Tetraodontidae
Genus:	Arothron
Species:	A. Chordates ( Phylum Chordata) are a group of Animals that includes the Vertebrates together with several closely related Invertebrates The Actinopterygii (the plural form of Actinopterygius) comprise the class of the ray-finned fishes. The Tetraodontiformes are an order of highly derived ray-finned fish, also called the Plectognathi. Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish The Genus Arothron, or fat puffers, is a member of the Pufferfish family ( Tetraodontidae) nigropunctatus

Binomial name

Arothron nigropunctatus
(Bloch & Schneider, 1801)

The blackspotted puffer, Arothron nigropunctatus, is a pufferfish of the genus Arothron, and can be found in reefs throughout the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish The Genus Arothron, or fat puffers, is a member of the Pufferfish family ( Tetraodontidae) The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth 's Oceanic divisions The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's Oceanic divisions covering about 20% of the water on the Earth 's surface It reaches a maximum length of 33 cm.

It has a round shape with a head and snout which at times looks like a seal or a dog. It can come in a variety of colors, although most commonly blue. The distinctive identifying item are the black spots. It feeds on algae, corals, sponges, seasquirts, crustaceans and molluscs. Algae ( sing. alga are a large and diverse group of simple typically Autotrophic organisms ranging from Unicellular to Multicellular forms Corals are Marine organisms from the class Anthozoa and exist as small Sea anemone –like Polyps typically in colonies of many The sponges or poriferans (from Latin porus "pore" and ferre "to bear" are Animals Structure of crustaceans As Arthropods crustaceans have a stiff Exoskeleton, which must be shed to allow the animal to grow ( Ecdysis or molting Molluscs are animals belonging to the phylum Mollusca. There are around 250000 extant Species within the phylum with an estimated 70000

Like most puffers, the blackspotted puffer is highly poisonous to eat.

References

"Arothron nigropunctatus". FishBase. FishBase is a comprehensive Database of information about Fish. Ed. Ranier Froese and Daniel Pauly. November 2006 version. N. p. : FishBase, 2006.

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