Western trumpeter whiting
Encyclopedia
The western trumpeter whiting, Sillago burrus, is a species of marine
fish
of the smelt whiting family Sillaginidae
that is commonly found along the northern coast of Australia
and in southern Indonesia
and New Guinea
. As its name suggests, it is closely related to and resembles the trumpeter whiting
which inhabits the east coast of Australia and is distinguishable by swim bladder morphology alone. The species inhabits a variety of sand
y, silt
y and mud
dy substrates in depths from 0 to 15 m deep, with older fish inhabiting deeper waters. Western trumpeter whiting are benthic carnivore
s which take predominantly crustacean
s and polychaete
s as prey. The species reaches sexual maturity
at the end of its first year of age, spawning in batches between December and February The species is taken as bycatch with other species of whiting and shrimp
s in Australia.
, which is one of three divisions of the smelt whiting family Sillaginidae
. The smelt-whitings are Perciformes
in the suborder Percoidea
.
The species was first recorded by Lt. Emery of the HMS Beagle
during the Australian leg of its voyage, with the lieutenant
making a detailed sketch of the fish. This sketch and description was received by John Richardson
in 1842, from which he described and named the species Sillago burrus without designating a holotype
specimen, and furthermore the original sketch has apparently been lost. The location where the specimen
was taken is also uncertain, with McKay narrowing down the range to between Depuch
and Barrow Island
s in northern Western Australia
, with New Guinea an outside possibility. In 1985 McKay designated a neotype from the Dampier Archipelago
, Western Australia.
The species has only ever been assigned one synonym
, S. maculata burrus by Whitley
in 1948 with apparently no reason given for the reassignment, although McKay also treated the species as a subspecies
of S. maculata in his comprehensive revision of the Sillaginidae.
extending to the cheek and head. The first dorsal fin
has 11 spines and the second dorsal fin has 1 leading spine with 19 to 21 soft rays posterior. The anal fin is similar to the second dorsal fin, but has 2 spines with 18 to 20 soft rays posterior to the spines. Other distinguishing features include 69 to 76 lateral line
scales and a total of 34 to 36 vertebrae. The species has a known maximum length of 36 cm.
Swim bladder morphology is the most effective way to distinguish it between related species S. maculata and S. aeolus. The swim bladder has far reduced anterolateral extensions of swim bladder compared to S. maculata and differs from S. aeolus in having two extensions, not three.
The western trumpeter whiting has very similar in coloration to S. aeolus and S. maculata, with only minor differences between the species. The body is an overall light sandy brown, being darker above and paler on the lower sides, with a silver mid line of the belly. The darker and lighter regions of the body are separated by a dull silver longitudinal band positioned mid laterally on the side of the body. In S. burrus the blotches are like oblique bars and they are not joined as in S. maculata. There is an indistinct black spot at the base of the pectoral fin and the upper and lower margins of the caudal fin are not as dark as in S. maculata. The abdominal
walls are usually white or silvery, where they are pale flesh coloured in the other trumpeter whitings.
northwards along the coast of the Northern Territory
and north Queensland
as well as further north along southern Indonesia
and Papua New Guinea
.
S. burrus inhabits water between 5 and 15 m deep, with juveniles
inhabiting shallow shoreline areas and moving offshore to slightly deeper water as they mature. They do not extend to the depths of other co-occurring sillaginids such as S. robusta. S. burrus prefers silt
y-sand or mud
dy substrates
, with the larger adults feeding near gutter
s and sandbars, and may also be found on mostly sand
y bottoms.
The juveniles of the species are known to inhabit protected seagrass
beds where they take advantage both the sheltered environment and also prey species that inhabit the seagrass community
. The young are also known to inhabit mangrove
creeks and broken bottom, as well as entering estuaries during Summer and Autumn in southern estuaries. Juvenile S. burrus are recruited to the estuary system, where with a number of other species continue a cycle of fish species throughout the year. The species also has the ability to withstand brackish water for extended periods, evident by their presence in intermittently open estuaries which are closed to the sea for most of the year.
s, and therefore has a slightly different diet to these other species to avoid interspecific competition
. The predominant prey consists of crustacean
s, with copepod
s and to a lesser extent amphipods and shrimp and other decapods
the main types taken. Polychaete
s are also a common part of the diet, with bivalves and echinoderm
s also contributing to its diet. The main difference in its diet is the high amount of copepods consumed, especially in juveniles.
The diet of the western trumpeter whiting changes with age like many of its close relatives. During its juvenile stage, the species diet is predominantly grammarid
amphipods and copepods, while as the fish grow to maturity, they tend to take more decapods such as caridean shrimp
s and crab
s, as well as polychaetes.
s predominantly between December and February, with a peak in January. During the spawning period, the ovaries possess large numbers of hydrated oocyte
s and no post-ovulatory follicle
s, with the oocytes tending to form several relatively discrete size groups. This indicates that S. burrus produces egg
s in batches and that the spawning of the members of this species is synchronised. The spreading of the release of eggs over the spawning periods would act as a buffer against any problems posed by adverse fluctuations in environmental
conditions such as the amount of food available to larva
e, or to predation
pressure.
S. burrus becomes sexually mature between lengths of 130 to 139 mm for females and 120 to 139 mm for male
s, with this occurring normally by the end of the first year of life. Juveniles inhabit shallow protected waters, often in estuaries, mangroves or protected bays, remaining there for about 3 months before migrating to deeper waters between 5 and 15 m depth when they are around 70 mm in length. This may be to reduce competition with other inshore sillaginid species such as S. vittata and S. bassensis, whose juvenile stages occupy the same shallow areas as S. burrus.
trawlers, which sweep through the seagrass habitat of these juveniles. In some areas such as the Leschenault Estuary
in Western Australia
, the western trumpeter whiting is a sought after fish by anglers, who catch it alongside other species of whiting. The species is considered good eating, and is marketed fresh in Australia
.
Marine (ocean)
Marine is an umbrella term. As an adjective it is usually applicable to things relating to the sea or ocean, such as marine biology, marine ecology and marine geology...
fish
Fish
Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...
of the smelt whiting family Sillaginidae
Sillaginidae
The Sillaginidae, commonly known as the smelt-whitings, whitings, sillaginids, sand borers and sand-smelts, are a family of benthic coastal marine fishes in the order Perciformes. The smelt-whitings inhabit a wide region covering much of the Indo-Pacific, from the west coast of Africa east to Japan...
that is commonly found along the northern coast of Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
and in southern Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and New Guinea
New Guinea
New Guinea is the world's second largest island, after Greenland, covering a land area of 786,000 km2. Located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, it lies geographically to the east of the Malay Archipelago, with which it is sometimes included as part of a greater Indo-Australian Archipelago...
. As its name suggests, it is closely related to and resembles the trumpeter whiting
Trumpeter whiting
The trumpeter whiting, Sillago maculata, is a common species of coastal marine fish of the smelt-whiting family, Sillaginidae. The trumpeter whiting is endemic to Australia, inhabiting the eastern seaboard from southern New South Wales to northern Queensland...
which inhabits the east coast of Australia and is distinguishable by swim bladder morphology alone. The species inhabits a variety of sand
Sand
Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles.The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal...
y, silt
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size somewhere between sand and clay whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body...
y and mud
Mud
Mud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...
dy substrates in depths from 0 to 15 m deep, with older fish inhabiting deeper waters. Western trumpeter whiting are benthic carnivore
Carnivore
A carnivore meaning 'meat eater' is an organism that derives its energy and nutrient requirements from a diet consisting mainly or exclusively of animal tissue, whether through predation or scavenging...
s which take predominantly crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s and polychaete
Polychaete
The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine. Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin. Indeed, polychaetes are sometimes referred to as bristle worms. More than 10,000...
s as prey. The species reaches sexual maturity
Sexual maturity
Sexual maturity is the age or stage when an organism can reproduce. It is sometimes considered synonymous with adulthood, though the two are distinct...
at the end of its first year of age, spawning in batches between December and February The species is taken as bycatch with other species of whiting and shrimp
Shrimp
Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...
s in Australia.
Taxonomy and naming
The western trumpeter whiting is one of 29 species in the genus SillagoSillago
Sillago is one of three genera in the family Sillaginidae containing the smelt-whitings, and contains 29 species, making Sillago the only non-monotypic genus in the family. Distinguishing among Sillago species can be difficult, with many similar in appearance and colour, forcing the use of swim...
, which is one of three divisions of the smelt whiting family Sillaginidae
Sillaginidae
The Sillaginidae, commonly known as the smelt-whitings, whitings, sillaginids, sand borers and sand-smelts, are a family of benthic coastal marine fishes in the order Perciformes. The smelt-whitings inhabit a wide region covering much of the Indo-Pacific, from the west coast of Africa east to Japan...
. The smelt-whitings are Perciformes
Perciformes
The Perciformes, also called the Percomorphi or Acanthopteri, is one of the largest orders of vertebrates, containing about 40% of all bony fish. Perciformes means perch-like. They belong to the class of ray-finned fish and comprise over 7,000 species found in almost all aquatic environments...
in the suborder Percoidea
Percoidea
Percoidea is a superfamily of fish of the order Perciformes....
.
The species was first recorded by Lt. Emery of the HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle
HMS Beagle was a Cherokee-class 10-gun brig-sloop of the Royal Navy. She was launched on 11 May 1820 from the Woolwich Dockyard on the River Thames, at a cost of £7,803. In July of that year she took part in a fleet review celebrating the coronation of King George IV of the United Kingdom in which...
during the Australian leg of its voyage, with the lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
making a detailed sketch of the fish. This sketch and description was received by John Richardson
John Richardson (naturalist)
Sir John Richardson was a Scottish naval surgeon, naturalist and arctic explorer.Richardson was born at Dumfries. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and became a surgeon in the navy in 1807. He traveled with John Franklin in search of the Northwest Passage on the Coppermine Expedition of...
in 1842, from which he described and named the species Sillago burrus without designating a holotype
Holotype
A holotype is a single physical example of an organism, known to have been used when the species was formally described. It is either the single such physical example or one of several such, but explicitly designated as the holotype...
specimen, and furthermore the original sketch has apparently been lost. The location where the specimen
Specimen
A specimen is a portion/quantity of material for use in testing, examination, or study.BiologyA laboratory specimen is an individual animal, part of an animal, a plant, part of a plant, or a microorganism, used as a representative to study the properties of the whole population of that species or...
was taken is also uncertain, with McKay narrowing down the range to between Depuch
Depuch Island
Depuch Island is a volcanic island located off the north-west coast of Western Australia's Pilbara region, near Port Hedland.-Aboriginal significance:...
and Barrow Island
Barrow Island
Barrow Island is the name of at least three islands:*Barrow Island *Barrow Island, Cumbria, England*Barrow Island...
s in northern Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
, with New Guinea an outside possibility. In 1985 McKay designated a neotype from the Dampier Archipelago
Dampier Archipelago
The Dampier Archipelago is a group of islands near Dampier, Western Australia. It is named after William Dampier, an English buccaneer and explorer who visited in 1699. Dampier named one of the islands, Rosemary Island.-History:...
, Western Australia.
The species has only ever been assigned one synonym
Synonym (taxonomy)
In scientific nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that is or was used for a taxon of organisms that also goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linnaeus was the first to give a scientific name to the Norway spruce, which he called Pinus abies...
, S. maculata burrus by Whitley
Gilbert Percy Whitley
Gilbert Percy Whitley was a British-born Australian ichthyologist and malacologist who was Curator of Fishes at the Australian Museum in Sydney for about 40 years. He was born at Swaythling, Southampton, England, and was educated at King Edward VI School, Southampton and Osborne House...
in 1948 with apparently no reason given for the reassignment, although McKay also treated the species as a subspecies
Subspecies
Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...
of S. maculata in his comprehensive revision of the Sillaginidae.
Description
As with most of the genus Sillago, the western trumpeter whiting has a slightly compressed, elongate body tapering toward the terminal mouth, reaching a maximum overall length of 36 cm. The body is covered in small ctenoid scalesScale (zoology)
In most biological nomenclature, a scale is a small rigid plate that grows out of an animal's skin to provide protection. In lepidopteran species, scales are plates on the surface of the insect wing, and provide coloration...
extending to the cheek and head. The first dorsal fin
Dorsal fin
A dorsal fin is a fin located on the backs of various unrelated marine and freshwater vertebrates, including most fishes, marine mammals , and the ichthyosaurs...
has 11 spines and the second dorsal fin has 1 leading spine with 19 to 21 soft rays posterior. The anal fin is similar to the second dorsal fin, but has 2 spines with 18 to 20 soft rays posterior to the spines. Other distinguishing features include 69 to 76 lateral line
Lateral line
The lateral line is a sense organ in aquatic organisms , used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water. Lateral lines are usually visible as faint lines running lengthwise down each side, from the vicinity of the gill covers to the base of the tail...
scales and a total of 34 to 36 vertebrae. The species has a known maximum length of 36 cm.
Swim bladder morphology is the most effective way to distinguish it between related species S. maculata and S. aeolus. The swim bladder has far reduced anterolateral extensions of swim bladder compared to S. maculata and differs from S. aeolus in having two extensions, not three.
The western trumpeter whiting has very similar in coloration to S. aeolus and S. maculata, with only minor differences between the species. The body is an overall light sandy brown, being darker above and paler on the lower sides, with a silver mid line of the belly. The darker and lighter regions of the body are separated by a dull silver longitudinal band positioned mid laterally on the side of the body. In S. burrus the blotches are like oblique bars and they are not joined as in S. maculata. There is an indistinct black spot at the base of the pectoral fin and the upper and lower margins of the caudal fin are not as dark as in S. maculata. The abdominal
Abdomen
In vertebrates such as mammals the abdomen constitutes the part of the body between the thorax and pelvis. The region enclosed by the abdomen is termed the abdominal cavity...
walls are usually white or silvery, where they are pale flesh coloured in the other trumpeter whitings.
Distribution and habitat
The western trumpeter whiting ranges from southern Western AustraliaWestern Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
northwards along the coast of the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
and north Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
as well as further north along southern Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
and Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea , officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is a country in Oceania, occupying the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and numerous offshore islands...
.
S. burrus inhabits water between 5 and 15 m deep, with juveniles
Juvenile (organism)
A juvenile is an individual organism that has not yet reached its adult form, sexual maturity or size. Juveniles sometimes look very different from the adult form, particularly in terms of their colour...
inhabiting shallow shoreline areas and moving offshore to slightly deeper water as they mature. They do not extend to the depths of other co-occurring sillaginids such as S. robusta. S. burrus prefers silt
Silt
Silt is granular material of a size somewhere between sand and clay whose mineral origin is quartz and feldspar. Silt may occur as a soil or as suspended sediment in a surface water body...
y-sand or mud
Mud
Mud is a mixture of water and some combination of soil, silt, and clay. Ancient mud deposits harden over geological time to form sedimentary rock such as shale or mudstone . When geological deposits of mud are formed in estuaries the resultant layers are termed bay muds...
dy substrates
Substrate (marine biology)
Stream substrate is the material that rests at the bottom of a stream. There are several classification guides. One is:*Mud – silt and clay.*Sand – Particles between 0.06 and 2 mm in diameter.*Granule – Between 2 and 4 mm in diameter....
, with the larger adults feeding near gutter
Gutter
panels of a comic strip or comic book page*Gutter , the space between panes of postage stamps that creates configurations of "gutter pairs" or "gutter blocks"*Gutter, in interface design, the blank spaces that separate rows and columns in screen...
s and sandbars, and may also be found on mostly sand
Sand
Sand is a naturally occurring granular material composed of finely divided rock and mineral particles.The composition of sand is highly variable, depending on the local rock sources and conditions, but the most common constituent of sand in inland continental settings and non-tropical coastal...
y bottoms.
The juveniles of the species are known to inhabit protected seagrass
Seagrass
Seagrasses are flowering plants from one of four plant families , all in the order Alismatales , which grow in marine, fully saline environments.-Ecology:...
beds where they take advantage both the sheltered environment and also prey species that inhabit the seagrass community
Community
The term community has two distinct meanings:*a group of interacting people, possibly living in close proximity, and often refers to a group that shares some common values, and is attributed with social cohesion within a shared geographical location, generally in social units larger than a household...
. The young are also known to inhabit mangrove
Mangrove
Mangroves are various kinds of trees up to medium height and shrubs that grow in saline coastal sediment habitats in the tropics and subtropics – mainly between latitudes N and S...
creeks and broken bottom, as well as entering estuaries during Summer and Autumn in southern estuaries. Juvenile S. burrus are recruited to the estuary system, where with a number of other species continue a cycle of fish species throughout the year. The species also has the ability to withstand brackish water for extended periods, evident by their presence in intermittently open estuaries which are closed to the sea for most of the year.
Diet
The western trumpeter whiting occupies the same areas a number of other sillaginidSillaginidae
The Sillaginidae, commonly known as the smelt-whitings, whitings, sillaginids, sand borers and sand-smelts, are a family of benthic coastal marine fishes in the order Perciformes. The smelt-whitings inhabit a wide region covering much of the Indo-Pacific, from the west coast of Africa east to Japan...
s, and therefore has a slightly different diet to these other species to avoid interspecific competition
Interspecific competition
Interspecific competition, in ecology, is a form of competition in which individuals of different species compete for the same resource in an ecosystem...
. The predominant prey consists of crustacean
Crustacean
Crustaceans form a very large group of arthropods, usually treated as a subphylum, which includes such familiar animals as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, shrimp, krill and barnacles. The 50,000 described species range in size from Stygotantulus stocki at , to the Japanese spider crab with a leg span...
s, with copepod
Copepod
Copepods are a group of small crustaceans found in the sea and nearly every freshwater habitat. Some species are planktonic , some are benthic , and some continental species may live in limno-terrestrial habitats and other wet terrestrial places, such as swamps, under leaf fall in wet forests,...
s and to a lesser extent amphipods and shrimp and other decapods
Decapoda
The decapods or Decapoda are an order of crustaceans within the class Malacostraca, including many familiar groups, such as crayfish, crabs, lobsters, prawns and shrimp. Most decapods are scavengers. It is estimated that the order contains nearly 15,000 species in around 2,700 genera, with...
the main types taken. Polychaete
Polychaete
The Polychaeta or polychaetes are a class of annelid worms, generally marine. Each body segment has a pair of fleshy protrusions called parapodia that bear many bristles, called chaetae, which are made of chitin. Indeed, polychaetes are sometimes referred to as bristle worms. More than 10,000...
s are also a common part of the diet, with bivalves and echinoderm
Echinoderm
Echinoderms are a phylum of marine animals. Echinoderms are found at every ocean depth, from the intertidal zone to the abyssal zone....
s also contributing to its diet. The main difference in its diet is the high amount of copepods consumed, especially in juveniles.
The diet of the western trumpeter whiting changes with age like many of its close relatives. During its juvenile stage, the species diet is predominantly grammarid
Gammaridea
Gammaridea is a suborder of small, shrimp-like crustaceans in the order Amphipoda. It contains about 7,275 of the 7,900 described species of amphipods, in approximately 1,000 genera, divided among around 125 families. Gammaridea includes almost all freshwater amphipods , as well as many marine...
amphipods and copepods, while as the fish grow to maturity, they tend to take more decapods such as caridean shrimp
Shrimp
Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...
s and crab
Crab
True crabs are decapod crustaceans of the infraorder Brachyura, which typically have a very short projecting "tail" , or where the reduced abdomen is entirely hidden under the thorax...
s, as well as polychaetes.
Life cycle
The western trumpeter whiting spawnSpawn (biology)
Spawn refers to the eggs and sperm released or deposited, usually into water, by aquatic animals. As a verb, spawn refers to the process of releasing the eggs and sperm, also called spawning...
s predominantly between December and February, with a peak in January. During the spawning period, the ovaries possess large numbers of hydrated oocyte
Oocyte
An oocyte, ovocyte, or rarely ocyte, is a female gametocyte or germ cell involved in reproduction. In other words, it is an immature ovum, or egg cell. An oocyte is produced in the ovary during female gametogenesis. The female germ cells produce a primordial germ cell which undergoes a mitotic...
s and no post-ovulatory follicle
Ovarian follicle
Ovarian follicles are the basic units of female reproductive biology, each of which is composed of roughly spherical aggregations of cells found in the ovary. They contain a single oocyte . These structures are periodically initiated to grow and develop, culminating in ovulation of usually a single...
s, with the oocytes tending to form several relatively discrete size groups. This indicates that S. burrus produces egg
Egg (biology)
An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...
s in batches and that the spawning of the members of this species is synchronised. The spreading of the release of eggs over the spawning periods would act as a buffer against any problems posed by adverse fluctuations in environmental
Natural environment
The natural environment encompasses all living and non-living things occurring naturally on Earth or some region thereof. It is an environment that encompasses the interaction of all living species....
conditions such as the amount of food available to larva
Larva
A larva is a distinct juvenile form many animals undergo before metamorphosis into adults. Animals with indirect development such as insects, amphibians, or cnidarians typically have a larval phase of their life cycle...
e, or to predation
Predation
In ecology, predation describes a biological interaction where a predator feeds on its prey . Predators may or may not kill their prey prior to feeding on them, but the act of predation always results in the death of its prey and the eventual absorption of the prey's tissue through consumption...
pressure.
S. burrus becomes sexually mature between lengths of 130 to 139 mm for females and 120 to 139 mm for male
Male
Male refers to the biological sex of an organism, or part of an organism, which produces small mobile gametes, called spermatozoa. Each spermatozoon can fuse with a larger female gamete or ovum, in the process of fertilization...
s, with this occurring normally by the end of the first year of life. Juveniles inhabit shallow protected waters, often in estuaries, mangroves or protected bays, remaining there for about 3 months before migrating to deeper waters between 5 and 15 m depth when they are around 70 mm in length. This may be to reduce competition with other inshore sillaginid species such as S. vittata and S. bassensis, whose juvenile stages occupy the same shallow areas as S. burrus.
Relationship to humans
The western trumpeter whiting is commonly trawled in association with the western population of Sillago robusta, as well as Sillago lutea in depths up to 36 m, with water between 5–15m the most prolific. The juveniles are also part of the bycatch of shrimpShrimp
Shrimp are swimming, decapod crustaceans classified in the infraorder Caridea, found widely around the world in both fresh and salt water. Adult shrimp are filter feeding benthic animals living close to the bottom. They can live in schools and can swim rapidly backwards. Shrimp are an important...
trawlers, which sweep through the seagrass habitat of these juveniles. In some areas such as the Leschenault Estuary
Leschenault Estuary
Leschenault Estuary is an estuarine lagoon that lies to the north of Bunbury, Western Australia.It had in the past met the Indian Ocean at the Leschenault Inlet - but that has been altered by harbour works for Bunbury, and the creation of The Cut north of the historical inlet location.The estuary...
in Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
, the western trumpeter whiting is a sought after fish by anglers, who catch it alongside other species of whiting. The species is considered good eating, and is marketed fresh in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
.