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| Mature male Hypsoblennius hentz, Feather Blenny, Cape Haze, FL |
We capture these in our trawls in the higher salinity. Unlike Hypleurochilus spp, H. hentz does not have canine teeth. Though they mostly ignore other species in the tank, Feather blennies will fight, biting off each other's cirri.
Chasmodes saburrae (Jordan and Gilbert,1882) Florida blenny
We typically catch these in the 21-meter seine over grass flats. The C. saburrae is the most abundant combtooth blenny we collect in Charlotte Harbor.
Mature males establish themselves, preferably in an empty oyster shell, but in an aquarium any shell will do. Mature females loaf about the area, feeding and advertising their readiness to enter nests by hovering vertically, high enough in the water column for nest guarding males to spot. Presumably this is to display her ripe belly.
When the larger, brilliantly colored male spots any female, whether advertising or not, he swims out shaking his head quickly in a side-to-side motion, circling to corral her back to his nest. If the little female is not receptive, she gets chased off.
The C. saburrae spawning episode in this video lasts an unusually long time. The amusing part of the video is where he appears to be taking a rest, flopped over the side for a few seconds each time before he goes back to work. As soon as the female is finished, she gets chased away from the nest. This prevents her from feeding on the eggs as well as chasing off other potential females that are nearby.
Once the male has eggs in the nest, he alternates fanning the eggs with looking out for interlopers and advertising to females, but never strays too far from home.
In our aquarium, competition is fierce. All the blennies fight each other- females chase off and mouth-fight over territory and males chase off and mouth-fight for nest sites. And of course, there are daily spawning episodes. They ignore each other at feeding time which is likely a tank effect.
All photos, videos and text are property of Chrystal H. Murray, and are not to be reproduced in any form without express permission from the author.
