Haemulidae: E III B4

Pomadasys olivaceum (Day, 1875)

Piggy or pinky

 

Egg diameter in µm	Number of oil globules	Diameter of oil globule in µm	Yolk texture	Perivitelline space	Position of oil globule at hatch	Gut length   at eye- pigment stage	Myomeres
750-790	1	170-205	segmented	narrow	bow	47% of NL	26

Egg: The pale yellow pigment dots on the developing embryo, are evenly spread from head to tail (A), which immediately identifies this egg from EIIIB3. The oil globule tends to be close to the head of the larva, even in the egg (A), and on a white background, often appears black due to the density of black pigment spots. Segmentation may be confined to the edge of the yolk, but is always distinct. Incubation is 25-30 hours.

Larva: The early larva shows a very distinctive pattern of straw-like bundles of yellow pigment, either in three clusters (B & C), or covering the entire notochord from the pectoral fin to well past the anus (D). And they persisted in a winter reared 15-day larva which was still preflexion (E).   B: 1 day, C: 2 days, D: 4 days, E: 15 days (21°C), F: 24 days, G: 33 days, H: 68 days. (Note: E was reared at 21°C, all the rest at 25°C).

The species proved easy to rear, and was successfully raised on several occasions. Twelve hatched larvae have been sequenced, and they matched 7 adult P. olivaceum barcoded for this study (BOLD).

Linked samples	Offshore	Inshore
Eggs	1303	1519
Hits	196	233

The pinky was one of the more common eggs in the Park Rynie samples, lying 24th in Table 3 (Introductory Notes). Spawning was all year round, with a small increase in winter (blue graph). The long-term spawning pattern (white graph), shows little change until 2000, when a steady decrease was seen, possibly related to the drought conditions that have prevailed over that period.. The eggs were recorded in the DHM samples on only two occasions, indicating that adults move away from the surfzone to spawn. The Park Rynie linked samples had 54% of eggs inshore, suggesting adults are predominantly spawning in 20-30m water depth. See Section 7.3 and Table 1 of the Introductory Notes, for more information on the linked samples.