Leafy Sea Dragon, Phycodurus eques.
The photographer writes; Though close relatives of sea horses, sea dragons have larger bodies and leaf-like appendages that enable them to hide among floating seaweed or kelp beds. Sea dragons feed on larval fishes and amphipods, such as and small shrimp-like crustaceans called mysids ("sea lice"), sucking up their prey in their small mouths. Many of these amphipods feed on the red algae that thrives in the shade of the kelp forests where the sea dragons live. As with their smaller common seahorse (and pipefish) cousins, the male sea dragon carries and incubates the eggs until they hatch. During mating the female deposits up to 250 eggs onto the "brood patch" on the underside of the male's tail. After about eight weeks, the brood hatches, but in nature only about 5 per cent of sea dragons survive to maturity (two years). A fully grown Leafy Sea Dragon grows to about 18 inches (45 cm).
Image: Jeffrey Jeffords.
As long as you send images to me (and I hope it will be for forever), I shall continue to share them with my readership. My purpose for posting these images is to remind all of us of the grandeur of the natural world and that there is a world out there that is populated by millions of unique species. We are a part of this world whether we like it or not: we have a choice to either preserve these species or to destroy them in search of short-term monetary gains. But if we decide to destroy these other life forms, the least we can do is to know what we are destroying by learning that they exist. If you have a high-resolution digitized nature image (I prefer JPG format) that you'd like to share with your fellow readers, feel free to email it to me, along with information about the image and how you'd like it to be credited.
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Cool - my favorite fish!!
Nice.
I find that cases of jaw-dropping camouflage like this (also stick insects; leaf-mimicking insects, toads & turtles; birdshit-mimicking beetles; and of course Biston betularia and background-matching geckos & cephalopods, ETC.!) are the best examples to use in describing how natural selection on genes in organisms can produce adaptive changes in phenotypes in populations--whether punctuated or gradual, it's very intuitive.