University of Michigan Museum of Zoology, Fish Species Descriptions: Lampetra appendix (DeKay)

Name

General Description: Lampreys are characterized by their eel-like body shape, sucking-disk mouth with rows of horny teeth, but no jaws, a single dorsal nostril, and seven external gill openings on each side. They have cartilaginous skeletons, no paired fins, and simple rounded caudal fins.
Specific Description: Dorsal fins separate; reduced teeth, not radiating, but in several groups; trunk myomeres 63-70. Larvae with tail fin bluntly pointed, its rays pigmented only at their bases; caudal segments unpigmented at lower limits; gill region pigmented from back to half the distance to branchial groove; no pigment below eye or on upper lip; larvae lack pigment below eye.

Distribution: Great Lakes and St. Lawrence R; Mississippi drainage; Atlantic slope from Connecticut River to VA.

Ecology: Lives mostly in creeks, spends several years in sand mixed with organic matter; metamorphoses in the fall to spawn the following spring on fine gravel of shallow riffles. Non-parasitic. Length to 20 cm.

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