This article is about a genus of fish. For the song The Fish (Schindleria Praematurus) by rock group Yes, see Fragile (Yes album). For the genus of plants, see Schindleria (plant).
The infant fishes are so called because they retain many of their larval characteristics (an example of neoteny). Their elongated bodies are transparent, and many of the bones never develop. S. praematura reaches a length of 2.5 cm (0.98 in). All of the Schindleria species are reef fishes. They may be among the most common fish of the reefs, based on the results of plankton tows, but because of their transparency and small size, they are infrequently seen in life.
A recently described species, the stout infantfish, S. brevipinguis, was briefly the world's smallest known vertebrate at 8 mm (about one-third inch), smaller even than the dwarf gobies, until the new record was set by the 7.9-mm Paedocypris progenetica in early 2006 and supplanted by the 7.7-mm frog Paedophryne amauensis in 2012.[5]
Apparently several (at least eight) further Schindleria species, native to the Ryukyu Islands, are yet to be described formally.
^Abu El-Regal, Mohamed A.; El-Sherbiny, Mohsen M.; Gabr, Mohamed H.; Fricke, Ronald (2021). "Schindleria parva, a new species of Schindler's fish (Teleostei: Schindleriidae: Schindleria) from Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Red Sea". Journal of Fish Biology. 99 (4): 1485–1491. Bibcode:2021JFBio..99.1485A. doi:10.1111/jfb.14857. PMID34270084. S2CID235958855.
