Endangered
Queensland lungfish
Neoceratodus forsteri
Endemic to Australia, the Neoceratodontidae are an ancient family belonging to the class Sarcopterygii, or lobe-finned fishes.
Appearance
Australian lungfish are olive-green to dull brown on the back, sides, tail, and fins, and pale yellow to orange on the underside. This colouration is the only obvious distinguishing sexual characteristic of the lungfish. Both sexes follow similar growth patterns, although the females grow to a slightly larger size.
The lungfish can grow to a length of about 150 cm (4.9 ft), and a weight of 43 kg (95 lb). It is commonly found to be about 100 cm (3.3 ft) and 20 kg (44 lb) on average.
Range and habitat
The Australian lungfish is native only to the Mary and Burnett River systems in south-eastern Queensland. It has been successfully distributed to other, more southerly rivers, among them the Brisbane, Albert, Stanley, and Coomera Rivers, and the Enoggera Reservoir in the past century. The Australian lungfish has also been introduced to the Pine, Caboolture, and Condamine Rivers, but current survival and breeding success are unknown.
Pins are Wikidata “endemic to” fields. Orange dots, when present, are GBIF occurrence tiles — survey bias included.
Diet
The Australian lungfish is active at night, and is essentially carnivorous. In captivity, it will feed on frogs, earthworms, pieces of meat, and pelleted food.
In the wild, its prey includes frogs, tadpoles, fishes, a variety of invertebrates, and plant material. No quantitative dietary data are available, but anecdotal observations clearly indicate the diet of the lungfish changes with development. The Australian lungfish spawns and completes its entire lifecycle in freshwater systems.
In crisis
Fossils of lungfish almost identical to this species have been uncovered in northern New South Wales, indicating that Neoceratodus has remained virtually unchanged for well over 100 million years, making it a living fossil and one of the oldest living vertebrate genera on the planet. It was included on the list of "vulnerable" species under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, as studies have failed to show it meets the criteria needed to be considered a threatened or endangered species. Even so, the species has been classified as Endangered on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List as of 2019.
Human activities currently threaten the Australian lungfish, particularly water development. Barriers to movement and altered flow regimens downstream of dams for irrigation purposes could lead to the disruption of existing population structure and cause even more loss of genetic variation.
CITES lists this taxon on Appendix II. Confirm the current appendix on the CITES checklist.
Queensland lungfish is Endangered on this catalog because that is the IUCN category stored on Wikidata. Confirm the official criteria and any later count on iucnredlist.org.
Sources
Written for this catalog from the English Wikipedia article on Queensland lungfish, Wikidata item Q782345. Family and order context is original field-guide writing about the group, not a copied assessment of this one species. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA. Not an IUCN assessment. Counts, when quoted, can change — confirm them on the recovery programme and on iucnredlist.org.
