ミジンベニハゼ (Mijinbenihaze) Lubricogobius exiguus couple found in Otomi over the past couple months.They are also known in English as the Yellow Pygmy Goby or Yellow Bellied Goby (english common names are all over the place).
These little guys are so rare and have such little mobility that they can change sexes in either direction (i.e. hermaphroditic). So any pair can change () to be sexually reproductive (Oyama 2023). They also seem to spawn multiple times in one breeding season, so this is why I kept seeing them in the same location over a few months (Dotsu & Fujita 1963). What I thought was interesting was the fact that during one of the observations, the two individuals occupied different bottles in the area. Could they have had 2 different egg clutches at the same time? I'm curious to know. These guys are rare to see this far north in Japan however. The water has consistently been in the upper 20s to low 30s so its been really warm. Could be a sign of warming oceans.
Oyama, T., Sonoyama, T., Kasai, M., Sakai, Y., & Sunobe, T. (2023). Bidirectional sex change and plasticity of gonadal phases in the goby Lubricogobius exiguus. Journal of Fish Biology, 102(5), 1079-1087.
Dotsu, Y., and Fujita, S. (1963). The nesting behavior, egg development and larva of the gobiid fish, Lubricogobius exiguus Tanaka. Bulletin of Japanese Society of Scientific Fisheries 29, 969-975. (In Japanese with English abstract.)
Music: Spiral and Zephyr by KaizanBlu
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