Negaprion brevirostris
(Poey, 1868) · speciesAt a glance
Sources14 archives
Databases and archives Negaprion brevirostris's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation18 languages↗
Animal Diversity WebUniv. of Michigan MZspecies account↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility3 311 records↗
OBISOcean Biodiversity Information System423 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI20 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics20 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
GoaTGenomes on a Tree · Sangergenome & karyotype↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
Paleobiology DatabasePBDB consortiumfossil record↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗
Catalogue of LifeCOLtaxonomy↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
The lemon shark (Negaprion brevirostris) is a species of shark from the family Carcharhinidae and is classified as a Vulnerable species by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Lemon sharks can grow to 3.4 m in length. They are often found in shallow subtropical waters and are known to inhabit and return to specific nursery sites for breeding. Often feeding at night, these sharks use electroreceptors to find their main source of prey: fish. Lemon sharks enjoy the many benefits of group living such as enhanced communication, courtship, predatory behavior, and protection. This species of shark gives birth to live young, and the females are polyandrous and have a biennial reproductive cycle. Lemon sharks are not thought to be a large threat to humans; there have been 10 recorded bites, none of which were life-threatening. The lemon shark's life span is unknown, but the average shark is 25 to 30 years old.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology2
Life cycle & reproduction3
Habitat & environment3
Uses & economy1
Other traits4
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Negaprion brevirostris has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
The complete instruction manual Negaprion brevirostris carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Negaprion brevirostris. Above itBeside it, the bars count how many dated finds fall in each slice of time; the tallest bar is labelled, and heights use a square-root scale so that thin slices stay visible next to rich ones. Read this as how well each stretch of time is preserved and studied — thick bars mean plenty of the right kind of rock and plenty of collectors, which is related to, but not the same as, how common it actually was.
How it livedPBDB
Record type3 790 records
Origin
Range
Depth
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions11 of 23 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| Florida Museum of Natural History- Zoology, Paleontology & Paleobotanylocation not on record | 56 |
| North Carolina Museum of Natural Scienceslocation not on record | 11 |
| Washington, US | 7 |
| University of California San Diegolocation not on record | 6 |
| Ann Arbor, US | 5 |
| University of Texas Biodiversity Collections (UTBC)location not on record | 4 |
| Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeirolocation not on record | 4 |
| Frankfurt am Main | 2 |
| Cambridge, US | 2 |
| Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collectionlocation not on record | 2 |
| CASlocation not on record | 2 |
| Chicago, US | 2 |
| Museu de Zoologia da Universidade de Sao Paulolocation not on record | 1 |
| Stockholm, SE | 1 |
| Barcelona, ES | 1 |
| University of California Los Angeleslocation not on record | 1 |
| Mexico City, MX | 1 |
| Museo civico La Terra e l'Uomo di Crocetta del Montellolocation not on record | 1 |
| Centro Interdisciplinario de Ciencias Marinas, Instituto Politécnico Nacionallocation not on record | 1 |
| FishBaselocation not on record | 1 |
| Paris, FR | 1 |
| 1 | |
| Los Angeles, US | 1 |
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Where the DNA of Negaprion brevirostris was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
Modelled climatemodelled
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.