Slender sunfish

Fish with typical truncated and stocky form, with epipelagic habits, cosmopolitan with a preference for warm-temperate waters. It lives in the Atlantic, between Madeira and the British Isles, and western Mediterranean, whereas is not common the Adriatic Sea. The rarity of this species in the Gulf of Venice is well documented since the second half of 19th century. So that, when Enrico Filippo Trois was lucky enough to come across the pictured specimen, an adult male, during one of his frequent visits to the fish market in Venice, he decided to focus on it his comparative anatomy studies. This research, of which the results were published in the journal “Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti” of 1883-1884, contributed to the proposal to split the sunfishes into different genera (I.V.S.L.A. Collection).