Animals of Lake Baikal Amphipods or crustacea
The body cover can be completely smooth or with a variety of «weapons.»
Amphipods inhabit all water body, including great depth. Most species are omnivorous,
feeding on detritus, algae, oligochetes and other small animals. Only some of
them are predators and caviar parasites.
Golomyanka
- Small oil-fish (golomyanka)
- Big oil-fish (golomyanka)
It is Baikal endemic. Oil-fish live all over Baikal in the in the thickness
of open waters and up to maximum depths.. It's body is naked, with scales. The
body of a big oil-fish contains about 44% of fat, the small oil-fish - up to
9%. The maturity starts from 3 years. Both are ovoviviparous, give birth to
live larvae, the number of which to 2-3 thousands. This fish is slow-moving.
It does not for stocks. Length - up to 21 cm. Maximum age - 8 years.
Epishura baikalskaya
It is Baikal endemic, the only specie of zooplankton in the lake which lives
in the thickness of Baikal water at all depths. The crustacean is up to 2 mm,
the major consumer of planktonic algae and bacteria. Epishura is the food for
plankton-eating fish and pelagic amphipod macrohectopus.
Oligochetes
One of the dominant groups of benthic inhabitants of the open lake. Most form
variety is found on soft soils from the water's edge to the maximum depths.
Few of Oligochetes - predators, the vast majority - detritophagous (eat soil).
They are the food for other animals.
Sferonostok plum Shaeronostoc
(Nostoc) pruniforme (Af) Elenk.The colonial blue-green algae. It lives in shallow
water, gulfs and bays of Lake Baikal. Sculpins / bullheads
Most representatives of Baikal fish fauna. 32 species of the fish are known,
30 of which are endemic. They live In the lake from the coastal zone and at
the maximum depth. Most bullheads have bottom lifestyle. The spawning period
is stretched The bullheads sizes are different from 5 to 30 cm Maximum age -12
years. Most representatives of Baikal fish fauna.
The experts total in Baikal about 150 kinds of belly-legs molluscums and 32
kinds of two-folding. From them 130 kinds - endemics. Them shells small-sized
and thus very thin and fragile. The materials necessary for construction of
a concha, are extracted from water, and in the Baikal water it is not enough
them and so. In a strip of a surf the molluscums meet seldom.
They abundantly populate stones, became overgrown by seaweed, and sandy grounds
enriched with organic matters on depths from 2-3 till 15-20 m. Though there
are also exceptions - some kinds have appeared are capable to live on slimes
of an abyssal zone.
Rucheiniki
The larvae of Baikal rucheiniki live on the bottom of Baikal in little shelters
that they have built out of sand over urse of 2 to 3 years. They appear en masse
in the zone of Baikal in June, when they turn into winged animals.
The time of "flight" of rucheiniki coincides with the the grayling,
which intensively feeds on rucheiniki, approaches the shore. The Baikal omul
also catches these insets and seems in towards the sheers when the misbsioiti.
|