Fin ray count

[Chen jing kai]

This was used to express how many caudal fin rays there are in a fish. The highlighted part. What does this mean?

 

[Sgooosh]

replying so i can see what it means

 

[Colin_T]

No idea, never seen it written like that.

Most of the stuff I have seen written by Ichthyologists says "dorsal fin 2-5 hard rays, 12-13 soft rays", "anal fin 3 hard rays, 7-9 soft rays", etc.

If the fish only has hard fin rays/ spines, then it is "dorsal fin 10-12 hard rays", "anal fin 6-7 hard rays". or something along those lines.

--------------------
If they are using wording like "i,5,5,i", they should have a key on the page saying what i and 5 mean.

 

[JuiceBox52]

replying so i can see what it means

If you look at the top of the thread, there is a way to "watch" the thread, so you get notifications when someone replies, even if you aren't replying to it!

 

[Byron]

I have frequently seen this in descriptions of a species, but frankly I've forgotten the meaning--if you could provide the species involved here, I may be able to track down the description.

 

[Byron]

Found what I was looking for. According to Fricke (1983):

Fin ray type
A: Spines. Symbol is Roman numeral upper, example I, II, III, IV, V, etc.
B: Segmented branched soft rays. Symbol is Arabic numerals (Fricke called them Indian numerals), example 1, 2, 3, etc.
C: Segmented unbranched soft rays. Symbol is lower case Roman numerals, example i, ii, iii, iv, v, etc.
0: Unsegmented unbranched soft rays. Symbol is lower case Roman numerals in parentheses, example (i), (iv), (v) etc.

Paper: Ronald Fricke, "A method of counting caudal fin rays of actinopterygian fishes," Braunschweiger Naturkundliche Schriften 1 (4), 1983, pp. 729-733.