Harman Patil (Editor)

Kaup's arrowtooth eel

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Kingdom
  
Animalia

Family
  
Synaphobranchidae

Genus
  
Synaphobranchus

Order
  
Eel

Class
  
Actinopterygii

Phylum
  
Chordata

Rank
  
Species

Kaup's arrowtooth eel eufp7coralfishnetgalleryoceanlabimagesmay08

Similar
  
Synaphobranchus, Eel, Cutthroat eel, Shortdorsal cutthroat eel, Histiobranchus

The Kaup's arrowtooth eel (Synaphobranchus kaupii, also known as the Kaup's cut-throat eel, the Gray's cutthroat, the Longnosed eel, the Northern cutthroat eel, or the Slatjaw cutthroat eel) is an eel in the family Synaphobranchidae (cutthroat eels). It was described by James Yate Johnson in 1862. It is a marine, deep water-dwelling eel which is known from the Indo-Western Pacific and eastern and western Atlantic Ocean, including the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Cape Verde, the Western Sahara, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, Greenland, France, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Philippines, Portugal, Spain, the Bahamas, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Japan, Australia, Mauritania, Morocco, and Hawaii. It dwells at a depth range of 120 to 4,800 metres (390 to 15,750 ft), most often between 400 to 2,200 metres (1,300 to 7,200 ft), and inhabits the upper abyssal zone on the continental slope. It is intolerant of the temperatures of higher waters. Males can reach a maximum total length of 100 centimetres (39 in).

The common name and species epithet "kaupii" refer to naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup. The Kaup's arrowtooth eel is preyed on by Coryphaenoides rupestris. Its own diet consists of benthic crustaceans including decapods and amphipods, planktonic crustaceans including euphausiids and mysids, cephalopods including species of Rossia, and bony fish including Macroramphosus scolopax. It is of no commercial interest to fisheries, but it is sometimes caught as by-catch by bottom longline and baited fish traps.

Due to the widespread distribution of the species and its abundance in many regions, the IUCN redlist currently lists the Kaup's arrowtooth eel as Least Concern.

References

Kaup's arrowtooth eel Wikipedia