Golden perch
| Golden perch | |
|---|---|
| A large, stocked, female golden perch caught from an impoundment: The fishing lure is still in its mouth. | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Perciformes |
| Family: | Percichthyidae |
| Genus: | Macquaria |
| Species: | M. ambigua |
| Binomial name | |
| Macquaria ambigua (J. Richardson, 1845) | |
| Synonyms | |
The golden perch (Macquaria ambigua) is a medium-sized, yellow or gold-coloured species of Australian freshwater fish found primarily in the Murray-Darling River system, though a subspecies is found in the Lake Eyre-Cooper Creek system, and another subspecies, suspected to be ancestral to all other populations, is found in the Fitzroy River system in Queensland. Other common names for golden perch are "goldens", “yellowbelly” and "callop", the last generally used only in South Australia.
Golden perch are not a true perch, which belongs to the genus Perca from the family Percidae, but a member of the Percichthyidae (temperate perch) family. This relatively widespread and widely stocked species is an important angling sport fish in Australia.