#pseudoscaphirhynchus kaufmanni

[sturgeonposting]

Hi sturgeonposting -

I just wanted to say that as a fellow fish lover, I love your blog! I've learned a lot about sturgeon from you, and they're become one of my favorite animals (my favorite species is the Amu Darya sturgeon because they're silly :) ). It's so nice to see someone spreading love about a lesser-known animal.

I hope you have a good day!

The Amu Darya sturgeon is a beautiful fish

Thank you for your kind words :)

[i-give-you-a-fish]

You get an Amu Darya Sturgeon

Pseudoscaphirhynchus kaufmanni

you gotta hand it to me

[sturgeonposting]

Amu Darya Sturgeon

Pseudoscaphirhynchus kaufmanni, commonly known as either the Amu Darya sturgeon or the false shovelnose sturgeon, is native to the Amu Darya river basin in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. The Amu Darya sturgeon grows around 30 inches long excluding its ribbon-like tail filament, which adds around another 10 inches to its total length when included. This sturgeon is not noteworthy for its large size, like some of its lengthier cousins. Instead, you’ll find yourself mesmerized by this sturgeon’s scintillating scutes!  There are two beautiful morphs of this species: a large morph with pearlescent white coloring, streaked with pale blues and purples, and a smaller, more quickly maturing morph with a darker coloration. The Amu Darya sturgeon is critically endangered due to habitat loss, overfishing, pollution, and poaching.

[sturgeonposting]

Sometimes it makes me sad that the scientific name for Pseudoscaphirhynchids is what it is

False spade snout

It basically means that pseudoscaphirhynchids are a fake (or at least secondary) iteration of scaphirhynchids

And it lowkey makes sense when you think of who was naming these fish, where the fish are, and when they were named

Scaphirhynchids (Heckel, 1835) are North American and pseudoscaphirhynchids (Nikolskii, 1900) are Middle Eastern/ Central Asian fyi

Like I get why they named it that I really do but I wish they had their own distinct name :(

They once had the name Kessleria but there’s a genus of moths also called Kessleria so I guess it’s not really a viable option

I think something like Armiscorpus (armor body) would be cool to acknowledge their particularly prominent scutes

Or maybe like Aralichthys (Aral fish) to honor the Aral Sea system they call home or once called home, since they’ve been mostly extirpated and are on the verge of extinction

P. kaufmanni

[sturgeonposting]

how many sturgeon species are there?

There are 28 extant species of sturgeon, organized into 4 genera: Acipenser, Huso, Scaphirhynchus, and Pseudoscaphirhynchus.

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Genus Acipenser contains the fish that come to most people’s minds when thinking of sturgeon: lake sturgeon, Atlantic sturgeon, white sturgeon, European sea sturgeon, etc. This is the largest genus of the family Acipenseridae, containing 20 species of sturgeon. Sturgeon in this family can be found in North America, Europe, and Asia.

(Atlantic sturgeon, A. oxyrynchus)

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Genus Huso has only two members: beluga and kaluga. They are native to Russia and the surrounding parts of Eurasia. There is some argument that these fish should be included in the genus Acipenser. Unlike the members of genus Acipenser, whose protrusible mouths face downward, sturgeons in genus Huso have forward-facing protrusible mouths.

(Kaluga, H. dauricus)

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Genus Scaphirhynchus contains three species of fish: shovelnose sturgeon, pallid sturgeon, and Alabama sturgeon. Scaphirhynchus means “spade snout”, in reference to these sturgeons’ long, flat, shovel-like snouts used to dig along river beds for food. This genus of sturgeon is native exclusively to the Missouri, Mississippi, and Alabama rivers in North America.

(Pallid sturgeon, S. albus)

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Genus Pseudoscaphirhynchus is native exclusively to the Aral Sea system in Central Asia. This genus has three members as well: the Amu Darya sturgeon, the dwarf sturgeon, and the Syr Darya sturgeon. Like genus Scaphirhynchus, these fish have shovel-like snouts. Sturgeon in this genus are very small compared to sturgeon in other genus; the largest Pseudoscaphirhynchus sturgeon reach about 30”, excluding tail filament.

(Amu Darya sturgeon, P. kaufmanni)

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Most species of sturgeon are endangered in some capacity. Many of the sturgeon mentioned in this post are critically endangered, with no individuals being spotted in the wild for many years.

It breaks my heart to think that we are slowly losing more and more species of these beautiful fish. But interest in their well-being is the first step to conservation, and that’s what I hope to cultivate here at sturgeonposting. Sorry to get all sappy at the end. I just love these guys. Long may the sturgeon swim.