The three-spined stickleback differs from other fish in that it has three spines, which are located on the back, in front of the fin. How interesting this fish is and where it lives will be discussed in this article.
Three-spined stickleback: description of fish
Appearance
Firstly, the fish is relatively small in size, although not as small as, for example, the perch. It can grow to a length of no more than 12 cm, weighing several tens of grams, although heavier individuals can also be found.
The body of this fish is elongated and strongly compressed laterally. At the same time, the body of this amazing fish is protected from enemies. As a rule, she has three prickly spines on her back, next to her fin. The abdomen also has a pair of sharp needles, which serve as fins for fish. In addition, the fused pelvic bones on the belly, at one time, served as a shield for the fish.
There is another interesting feature associated with the absence of scales. Instead, there are transverse plates on the body, the number of which ranges from 20 to 40. Similar plates are located in the back area, which is colored greenish-brown. The belly of this fish is silvery in color, and the chest area is colored red. At the same time, during the spawning period, the chest area takes on a bright red hue, and the back area changes to bright green.
Behavior
This type of fish can be found in both fresh and slightly salty water. At the same time, stickleback chooses bodies of water with slow currents. These can be small rivers and lakes with a muddy bottom and thickets of aquatic vegetation. The fish live in numerous schools. The flocks move around the pond very actively and react to any object that has fallen into the water. In this regard, stickleback quite often gets on the nerves of anglers, constantly prowling around the fishing point.
Spawning
Despite the fact that the female can lay no more than 100 eggs, the stickleback reproduces very actively. During the spawning period, this fish forms a kind of nest where the female lays eggs. After this, males begin to take care of the offspring.
During the spawning period, female sticklebacks are brighter in color.
Before spawning begins, their responsibilities are clearly divided between females and males. Males are responsible for forming nests and finding places to do so. As a rule, they build nests in the muddy bottom or in the grass next to water lilies. They use mud and pieces of grass to build ball-shaped nests.
After the nest is built, the male looks for a female, who lays eggs in his nest, after which he fertilizes her. At the same time, a male can find more than one female. In this case, his nest may contain eggs from several females.
The spawning period can last up to one month. As soon as the fry are born, the male takes care of them, driving away predators. At the same time, he does not allow the young to swim too far. And yet, despite such care, only a third of the young manage to survive.
Enemies of stickleback
Since the three-spined stickleback has spines on its back and needles on its belly, it can defend itself from enemies. Despite this, it has natural enemies, such as pike perch or pike. If a fish is attacked by a predatory fish, it straightens its spines, which stick into its mouth. In addition to predatory fish, stickleback is hunted by birds such as seagulls.
Where are sticklebacks found?
This fish inhabits almost all bodies of water in Europe, such as lakes and rivers. In addition, it is found everywhere in water bodies of North America.
On the territory of Russia, the three-spined stickleback is found in the rivers and lakes of the Far East, and more precisely in Kamchatka. Stickleback, although rare, is found in the European regions of Russia, including Lake Onega and the Volga River delta.
© Three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus)
A little about three-spined stickleback
The body of the stickleback, like that of seahorses, is covered not by scales, but by bony plates, forming a hard and strong shell around the fish. After all, both species belong to the order Sticklebacks, but to different families. Stickleback is a member of the stickleback family, of which 12 species are known. In the vicinity of St. Petersburg there lives a three-spined stickleback, and it was she who found herself in the role of a “saving angel” during the days of the blockade.
Appearance of three-spined stickleback
Three-spined sticklebacks are found in fresh water bodies and in the sea. The length of the freshwater form is 4-6 centimeters. The body is elongated, but quite high, slightly compressed from the sides. The short caudal peduncle passes into the caudal fin, which is not divided into lobes. The body, instead of scales, is protected by bone plates, and it seems that the fish is encased in a shell. The slightly pointed head has large, expressive eyes.
In the photo of the stickleback, three sharp large spines located in the center of the back are clearly visible. Based on their number, the fish got its name - three-spined. The dorsal fin is located behind the spines. But this is not all the “weapon” of this little fish. Instead of pelvic fins, she also has spines. Raised spikes are a very formidable and serious weapon.
Formidable weapon - thorns
When the stickleback fish is in a calm state, the spines fit tightly to the body.
When there is danger or attack from a predator, the spines rise and spread out in three directions - up from the back and to the sides from the abdomen. In this position, they plunge into the predator's mouth.
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In fights between males before spawning, this weapon is also successfully used. It often happens that the winner rips apart his opponent with the help of his spikes.
Coloring and sexual differences
The color of the stickleback is changeable, and it is influenced by several factors: age, physiological state, habitat and season:
- young specimens are silver in color;
- in winter the color is silver-grayish, and in summer it is greenish-brownish with a silvery tint.
Usually males and females do not differ in color. But during the breeding season, the back of the male becomes bluish, the lower part of the head and body turns red.
The females also transform - dark transverse stripes appear on the sides of the body and on the back, and the abdomen acquires a pale yellow color. After spawning is completed, the coloring becomes the same.
Reproduction
The nest is built on the shallows among aquatic plants, provided that there is a moderate current there. A hole is dug at the bottom: the male picks up sand with his mouth and takes it to the side.
The building material is scraps and remains of plants, which the male fastens with mucus from the sides of his body. The nest is fixed on the stems of underwater plants and is immersed in the mud, so it is invisible. A photo of a male stickleback shows the process of collecting plant debris to build a nest.
When the nest is ready, the male pushes the female into the nest, who stays there for a few seconds and manages to lay her portion of eggs (about 100 eggs). The male immediately kicks her out and hurries to fertilize the eggs. Then he looks for another female and does the same with her. The most agile males can collect eggs from six to seven females (150-180 eggs).
Then it's time for the male to get busy:
- While guarding the nest, he attacks everyone who happens to be nearby.
- Corrects and repairs the nest.
- Provides developing eggs with fresh water - fans them with pectoral fins.
The three-spined stickleback does not live long - 3-4 years. It begins to reproduce at the end of the first year of life (in freshwater bodies). Although she is small, she is very voracious - a kind of small predator. Its food: fry and eggs of other fish (including its own species), worms, crustaceans, insect larvae.
How they caught stickleback during the blockade
Residents of besieged Krondstadt used improvised devices to catch stickleback instead of nets: shirts, bags, baskets, T-shirts, butterfly nets with very small cells.
The fish soup and cutlets made from small spiny fish turned out to be tasty and, most importantly, nutritious. This is such a fish - blockade stickleback.
Bronze fish on metal waves
Three bronze fish and metal waves - this is what the monument to the siege stickleback looks like, located above the water flow of the Obvodny Canal next to the Blue Bridge on Kotlin Island in Krondstadt.
Four lines from a poem by Maria Aminova, a Krondstadt poetess, are written on the memorial plaque.
In 2012, the monument to the siege stickleback in Krondstadt was inscribed in the “Book of Memory of the Great War.” According to tradition, every year on January 27 (the day the siege of Leningrad was lifted), the grandchildren and children of the siege survivors bring flowers to the monument. And amateur fishermen have developed their own tradition of visiting “bronze sticklebacks” before fishing. This is a sign that the fish will bite better.
Economic value of stickleback
For fishermen, this fish is a real disaster, as it scurries around the pond in schools and attacks any object that falls into the water. Moving in schools, it creates additional noise in the water column at the fishing point, which scares away other fish. In addition, this fish is not of an acceptable size, and the presence of spines scares off most fishermen. In Kamchatka, where stickleback is found everywhere, local residents call it nothing more than “khakalch”, “khakal” or “khakhalcha”.
In fact, it is considered a trash fish and is not caught on an industrial scale. Despite this, stickleback is used in medicine, extracting the highest quality fat from it, which promotes wound healing, especially after burns. In addition, it is also possible to obtain technical fat from it for industrial use. If it is processed properly, it can be used as fertilizer for fields and as feed meal. Poultry will also not refuse such nutritious food.
More recently, and even in our time, local residents of the Far East caught stickleback and used its fat to prepare other homemade dishes. Oddly enough, stickleback fat is odorless compared to the fat of other fish. In addition, its fat is given to children to prevent various ailments.
If desired, you can cook fish soup from stickleback, but it will turn out too bony and not very rich, unless you use the largest individuals, if you manage to catch them.
Some fans place stickleback in an aquarium, although to keep it you need to have a sufficiently large container. In addition, for its successful maintenance, appropriate conditions are needed. The fact is that during spawning periods, males show maximum aggression towards other males, and for this you need to have a lot of living space. The bottom of the aquarium should consist of a sand base, and the lighting should be closer to natural. As a rule, the three-spined stickleback does not tolerate bright light.
Nine-spined stickleback
The species is not much larger than the previous one (body length 5-7 cm). Regardless of the size of an adult stickleback fish, it has no commercial or economic significance. This species has a laterally flattened and elongated body, as well as large eyes (in the second photo). The back can have a gray-greenish color up to a brown tint, the belly can be light silver. The males change color during spawning. The belly and sides become black, and the spines become white. This is a migratory species, distributed in the Atlantic, Arctic and Pacific oceans, in the Great Lakes basin.
If we talk about what stickleback fish are afraid of, it is worth mentioning freshwater (perch, pike, pike perch, catfish, burbot, chub) and marine (herring, herring, gobies, etc.) predators. They can also feed on snakes, marsh turtles, frogs, birds of prey and some mammals. It all depends on the habitat.
Nutrition
At the beginning of their life, the diet, like that of all fry of predatory fish, consists of plankton. Then invertebrates, tadpoles, and crustaceans are included in the diet. Large specimens of smelt can attack juveniles and adults of other species.
Cannibalism is no stranger to this silvery fish. Due to their tendency to eat eggs, wherever smelt are found, there is a threat of decline in fish populations. Smelt, eating all small-sized animals, is itself an important link in the overall food chain.
Its caviar is a nutritional aid not only for aquatic inhabitants, but also for birds and insects. Juvenile smelt are hunted by marine and freshwater predators, including the smelt itself. Adult fish make a significant contribution to nutritional well-being. They feed on it in large numbers: cod, sea bass, marine animals, including cetaceans.
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External characteristics
Stickleback belongs to the ray-finned family of the stickleback order. The name unites 5 genera and about 8 species of these representatives.
They differ in: spines located in the dorsal fin area. This small fish has no scales, and not all individuals have a ventral fin. Most often, in the fin area there is one spine or 2 soft rays. When danger arises, the sticker uses its weapon, straightening out all the sharp thorns. They pierce the enemy's body.
Stickleback belongs to the ray-finned family of the stickleback order.
There are more than 30 bone plates on the sides of the body. They act as additional protection. The stickleback fish is one of the smallest representatives of water bodies. Body length reaches 5−6 cm in adulthood. Color may vary depending on the species, including:
- four-needle;
- nine-needle;
- stream;
- marine;
- small southern;
- three-needle.
