Protopterus dolloi

Protopterus dolloi is a fresh water fish of the kind Protopterus which gathers African dipneustes , sometimes sold under the name of eel. This fish and its lava equipped with hypertrophied gills are able to live in rather hot and little oxygenated water. The adult can estiver in the mud at the bottom of the drained ponds.

Description

Its body anguilliforme, of oval section, is powerful. Its color brownish color mouchetée of darker spots makes it perhaps less visible by its preys or for its predatory. Its dorsal fins and anal are widened out of blade of knife, whereas the pectoral ones are in the shape of filament; the eyes are unusually small for a fish, and they are blue.

Lifestyle

Equipped with a particular respiratory body, it can spend the dry season in Estivation, hidden and rolled up swell about it in mud, surrounded by a kind of cocoon of Mucus which hardens while drying, protecting it from dehydration. He survives thus until the rain season.
La female lays in a nest on the bottom, that the male defends.
Un of its Prédateur S terrestrial is the Nozzle in shoe of the Nile (Balaeniceps rex) which attends the same habitats.

This fish can survive in an acid water, and presents the curious one proporiété to be capabe to strongly acidify its environment, which could be related to its manner of excreting its nitrogenized waste

Habitat

Slow or stagnant water rich in watery plants.

Food

This species is carnivorous. It nourishes invertebrates and fish grabbed in full water or in the substrate that the fish excavates.

Distribution

In Africa: Congolese central basin, Low-Congo and Bas-Kouilou, in Gabon (Ogooué, Lakes Lambaréné)

See too

External bonds

Karl-Heinz Lüling: Die Lungenfische und der Südamerikanische Kurzschwanzaal. Westarp Wissenschaften 1999; ISBN 3894328479

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