Pseudopleuronectes americanus
Winter Flounder
NS
G5
Collection Details
Specimens
Photos
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Records
Taxonomic Hierarchy
Actinopterygii (Ray-finned Fishes)
Pleuronectfiormes (Flatfishes)
Pleuronectidae (Righteye Flounders)
Pseudopleuronectes
Pseudopleuronectes americanus (Winter Flounder)
Description
This species account was compiled from
FishBase (Froese, R. and D. Pauly. Editors. 2025. FishBase. World Wide Web electronic publication. www.fishbase.org, version 04/2025.)
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Characters
Body shape: short and / or deep.
Distribution
Western Atlantic: Labrador, Canada to Georgia, USA.
Habitat Associations
Marine. demersal. depth range 5-143 m.
Biology
Adults inhabit soft muddy to moderately hard bottoms (Ref. 5951). Feed predominantly in daytime on organisms living in, on or near the bottom; shrimps, amphipods, crabs, sea urchins and snails (Ref. 12232). Batch spawner (Ref. 51846).
Max length: 64.0 cm TL; max weight: 3600 g; max age: 14 years.
Reproductive mode: dioecism; fertilization: external; nonguarders (open water/substratum egg scatterers); parental care: none.
IUCN Red List Status: Vulnerable (VU), assessed 2021-02-12. Resilience: Low (K=0.11-0.7(?); tm=2-3; tmax=14).
Commercial or Environmental Importance
Fisheries: commercial; gamefish; aquaculture: experimental.
References
Leim, A.H. and W.B. Scott (1966) Fishes of the Atlantic coast of Canada. Bull. Fish. Res. Board Can. (155):485 p.
Scott, W.B. and M.G. Scott (1988) Atlantic fishes of Canada. Can. Bull. Fish. Aquat. Sci. 219:731 p.
Robins, C.R. and G.C. Ray (1986) A field guide to Atlantic coast fishes of North America. Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston, U.S.A. 354 p.
Langton, R.W. and R.E. Bowman (1981) Food of eight Northwest Atlantic Pleuronectiform Fishes. NOAA Technical Report NMFS SSRF-749, U.S. Department of Commerce.
Hacunda, J.S. (1981) Trophic relationships among demersal fishes in a coastal area of the Gulf of Maine. Fish. Bull. 79(4):775-788.
Murua, H. and F. Saborido-Rey (2003) Female reproductive strategies of marine fish species of the North Atlantic. J. Northwest Atl. Fish. Sci. 33:23-31.
Patzner, R.A. (2008) Reproductive strategies of fish. pp. 311-350. In Rocha, M.J., A. Arukwe and B.G. Kapoor (eds). Fish reproduction: cytology, biology and ecology. Science Publisher, Inc. Oxford. 631 p.
Vinnikov, K.A., R.C. Thomson and T.A. Munroe (2018) Revised classification of the righteye flounders (Teleostei: Pleuronectidae) based on multilocus phylogeny with complete taxon sampling. Molecular phylogenetics and evolution, 125:147-162. DOI: 10.1016/j.ympev.2018.03.014
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