Otoliths as an integral part in fossil fish taxonomy

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Otoliths as an integral part in fossil fish taxonomy Christoph Gierl1* and Bettina Reichenbacher1 1 Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Section Palaeontology & Geobiology, Germany Otoliths are small structures in the skull of fishes. They are responsible for hearing and orientation in the 3-dimensional space. They also hold valuable information regarding the taxonomy. Their outline, the shape of the sulcus and other features allow the determination of a fish even to the species level. A lot of fossil species are solely based on otoliths because of their good chance of preservation. Gobies are in this case no different. An additional challenge in gobies is their high similarity between species concerning the preservable parts. Fossil skeletons that are 20 Million years old can show only few differences compared to recent gobies. These features are often hardly recognizable due to their preservation. As a consequence many fossil gobies have been assigned to the genus Gobius sensu lato. Examples are two gobies from the Miocene of Southern Germany. They have a unique combination of characters (six branchiostegals, palatine resembling a “T”, no entopterygoid) that allows the rectification of a new fossil genus but the two species are hardly distinguishable based only on the skeleton. The key hints in having two species are the otoliths. They show slight but consistent differences in their outline. This shows that otoliths can be a key feature in species identification. They should also be taken into consideration by recent fish species. Not to mention their possible phylogenetic potential that remains to be explored. References Christoph Gierl and Bettina Reichenbacher (2015) A New Fossil Genus of Gobiiformes from the Miocene Characterized by a Mosaic Set of Characters. Copeia: December 2015, Vol. 103, No. 4, pp. 792-805. Keywords: Gobiiformes, otolith, fossil, Gobius, phylogeny Conference: XV European Congress of Ichthyology, Porto, Portugal, 7 Sep - 11 Sep, 2015. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Otoliths as a tool to study fish life cycles Citation: Gierl C and Reichenbacher B (2015). Otoliths as an integral part in fossil fish taxonomy. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: XV European Congress of Ichthyology. doi: 10.3389/conf.fmars.2015.03.00125 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 24 Nov 2015; Published Online: 24 Nov 2015. * Correspondence: Mr. Christoph Gierl, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Section Palaeontology & Geobiology, Munich, 80333, Germany, c.gierl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Christoph Gierl Bettina Reichenbacher Google Christoph Gierl Bettina Reichenbacher Google Scholar Christoph Gierl Bettina Reichenbacher PubMed Christoph Gierl Bettina Reichenbacher Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.