Ayu sweetfish: Where It Lives, Map & Facts

Where the ayu sweetfish lives – recorded in 3 countries, with quick facts from Wikidata and an introduction from Wikipedia.

Scientific name	Plecoglossus altivelis
Group	Bony fish
Status	Data deficient (Wikidata, IUCN category label)
Found in	3 countries
Continents	Asia
Class	Ray-finned fish
Order	Osmeriformes
Family	Plecoglossidae

Where does the ayu sweetfish live?

Open-licence (CC0 / CC BY) wild records published on GBIF place the ayu sweetfish in 3 countries and territories across Asia. In Chinese Taipei it is listed as introduced (GRIIS checklists via GBIF).

Countries with at least a handful of records (a minimum share of the species’ records, to leave out vagrants and escapes). Records with coordinates only; captive and fossil records excluded.

Is the ayu sweetfish endangered?

The ayu sweetfish’s conservation status recorded in Wikidata is “Data deficient” (an IUCN Red List category label). Source: Wikidata.

What kind of animal is the ayu sweetfish?

The ayu sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis) is a ray-finned fish in the order Osmeriformes and the family Plecoglossidae, genus Plecoglossus. (Taxonomy from Wikidata.)

About the ayu sweetfish

The ayu sweetfish (Plecoglossus altivelis), ayu (アユ, 鮎, 年魚, 香魚) or sweetfish, is a species of bony fish. It is the only species in the genus Plecoglossus and family Plecoglossidae. It is a relative of the smelts and other fish in the order Osmeriformes.

Native to East Asia, it is distributed in the northwestern Pacific Ocean along the coast of Hokkaidō in Japan southward to the Korean Peninsula, China, Hong Kong and northern Vietnam. It is amphidromous, moving between coastal marine waters and freshwater lakes and rivers. A few landlocked populations also exist in lakes in Japan such as Lake Biwa. Original wild populations in Taiwan became extinct in 1968 due to pollution and present extant populations were reintroduced from Japan in the 1990s.

Text in “About” is quoted from the Wikipedia article Ayu sweetfish (revision 1366795890), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: lead section excerpted verbatim, formatting removed. Quick facts, taxonomy and status: Wikidata Q642906 (CC0). Countries and pin: GBIF.org occurrence records (CC0 / CC BY 4.0).