Specimen image via iDigBio · BY
Species
Data DeficientAyu sweetfish
SPECIES
- KingdomAnimalia
- PhylumChordata
- ClassTeleostei
- OrderOsmeriformes
- FamilyPlecoglossidae
via GBIF · IUCN
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 161
- With media
- 6
- Family
- Plecoglossidae
- Collections
- UWFC, CAS, USNM, TCWC, SIO, UMMZ
- Recorded in
- Japan, China, South Korea
Wikidata facts
- Instance of
- taxon
- Image
- Sweetfish, Plecoglossus altivelis.jpg
Show 6 more facts
- Commons category
- Plecoglossus altivelis
- taxon name
- Plecoglossus altivelis
- taxon rank
- species
- IUCN conservation status
- Data Deficient
- Commons gallery
- Plecoglossus altivelis
- taxon common name
- アユ
Sources (2)
via Wikidata · CC0
~6 min read
Encyclopedic overview
The ayu sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis), ayu (アユ, 鮎, 年魚, 香魚) or sweetfish, is a species of bony fish. It is the only species in the genus Plecoglossus and family Plecoglossidae. It is a relative of the smelts and other fish in the order Osmeriformes.
Native to East Asia, it is distributed in the northwestern Pacific Ocean along the coast of Hokkaidō in Japan southward to the Korean Peninsula, China, Hong Kong and northern Vietnam. It is amphidromous, moving between coastal marine waters and freshwater lakes and rivers. A few landlocked populations also exist in lakes in Japan such as Lake Biwa. Original wild populations in Taiwan became extinct in 1968 due to pollution and present extant populations were reintroduced from Japan in the 1990s.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Plecoglossus altivelis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.