The EGGS Table
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Fish eggs display an astonishing variety of colors, shapes, appendages, sizes and places of development. The EGGS table tries to standardize such information in order to assist in fish egg identification and in comparative studies.
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| The EGGS table has fields for the Environmental parameters that are usually associated with the occurrence of fish eggs, such as Temperature, Depth range, Salinity, pH and Oxygen content of the water. A Remarks field accommodates any additional environmental information.
The Place of development is given as a choice field with
the options: buoyant (pelagic); on the bottom (demersal); fixed on plant or
stone; in sand or gravel; in open nest; in covered nest (i.e., burrow or
tunnel); in bubble nest; in mouth (mouthbrooders); attached to parental body; in
brood pouch; in female (live-bearers); outside the water; in another animal
(i.e., bivalve); other.
The Shape of egg can be classified as: spherical; ovoid;
elongated; other.
The Attributes of the egg can be: smooth; sculptured;
with filaments; with tendrils; with stalk; in jelly matrix; other. In addition,
the eggs can be sticky or not sticky.
The Color of eggs can be: transparent; white; yellow,
orange, amber; brown, black, gray; green; other.
The Color of oil globule(s) can be: yellow; orange/red;
green; other.
The Number of oil globules and their diameter as
well as the Egg diameter can be given as a range.
The Perivitelline width and the Chorion thickness
are two additional identification characters, which can be stated as percent of
a Reference diameter.
Additional characters that may be helpful for
identification can be stated in a text field.
To date the EGGS table covers more than 400 species, mostly
from the North Atlantic or Mediterranean. Information has been drawn from more
than 600 references such as Russell (1976), Fahay (1983) and Moser et al.
(1984). No serious checking has been done so far and thus the table is likely to
contain errors.
You get to the EGGS table by clicking on the Biology
button in the SPECIES window and the Reproduction button in the
BIOLOGY window and the Eggs button in the next window.
On the Internet, you can access the EGGS table by clicking on
the respective link in ‘More information’ section of the ‘Species Summary’ page,
either in FishBase or in LarvalBase (
Fahay, M. 1983. Guide to the stages of marine fishes occurring
in the Western North Atlantic, Cape Hatteras to the Southern Scotian shelf. J.
Northwest Atlantic Fish. Sci. 4, 423 p.
Moser, H.G., W.J. Richards, D.M. Cohen, M.P. Fahay, A.W.
Kendall, and S.L. Richardson, Editors. 1984. Ontogeny and systematics of fishes.
Am. Soc. Ichthyol. Herpetol. Spec. Publ. 1, 760 p.
Russell, F.S. 1976. The eggs and planktonic stages of British
marine fishes. Academic Press, London. 524 p. | ||||||||||||||||||