Jolthead porgy

The Jolthead porgy, Calamus bajonado is an ocean-going species of fish in the family Sparidae. In Bermuda, it is known as the Blue bone pory, in the United States, it is also known by the Spanish name Bojanado, in Jamaica, it is one of the species known by the name, Porgi grunt.

Taxonomy and naming

Credit for describing the Jolthead porgy goes to Marcus Elieser Bloch and Johann Gottlob Schneider. Though Bloch died in 1799, Schneider edited and republished several of Bloch's papers in a book called Systema Ichthyologiae iconibus cx illustratum in 1801. It was originally placed in the genus Sparus, which now contains only one species, but has since been moved into Calamus. The Genus name comes from the mythological Calamus, or Kalamos. It was so named because the Calamus of myth allowed himself to drown in a river, after the death of his lover, and transform into aquatic plants that some members of the genus make their homes in. The species name, bojonado comes from the Spanish words bojo and nado, which mean "low swimming". Its common name is thought to come from its feeding behavior- that Jolthead porgies feed by jolting mollusks from rocks.