Talk:Actinopterygii

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This article is part of WikiProject Fishes, an attempt to organise a detailed guide to all Fish taxa and related topics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the Portal, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. This project is an offshoot of the WikiProject Tree of Life

hello, this is a good web page!~ emily

The following information was moved out of the article page into the disussion page here. Whpq 01:39, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

your entry for Syngnathiformes is wrong. The order doesn't exist and the seahorses and relatives belong in the order Gasterosteiformes. Entry is based on the information in FishBase, which is incorrect. Although there's been some argument about splitting the sticklebacks and the seahorses up and putting sticklebacks in the Gasterosteiformes and the seahorses in the Syngnathiformes, the taxonomic consensus is that everyone is in the Gasterosteiformes. The embarrassing part is if you click on Syngnathiformes on the FishBase page, they give as their reference our textbook, even though we called them gasterosteiforms. I've written FishBase (5 minutes ago) to make the correction.* see below

Gene Helfman, Professor Institute of Ecology University of Georgia Athens, GA 3002 helfman@uga.edu

• "pipefishes and seahorses and relatives are listed in FishBase in the order Syngnathiformes. Consensus is that they should be in the Gasterosteiformes (see Nelson 1994 and 2006, Fishes of the World, 3rd and 4th edition, also Names of Fishes of U.S. and Canada 6th edition). I wouldn't make a big deal of this but you cite our textbook (Helfman et al. 1997, The Diversity of Fishes, Blackwell.) as the source for the information and we also put them in the Gasterosteiformes."

Contents 1 Helfman 2 alphabet 3 Paraphyly 4 ray-finned

[edit] Helfman

I e-mailed Prof. Helfman on this a couple weeks ago, and got no response, BTW. Tkinias 14:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Despite the veracity of Gene Helfman's comments, every phylogenetic analysis that has included both gasterosteiform and syngnathiform fishes during the last 14 years has recovered them as two distinct and unrelated groups. The gasterosteiforms being more closely related to the sculpins. The relationships of the syngnathinforms being more obscure. Regardless, it would be unwise to put them back together as he suggests.

[edit] alphabet

Is there any reason why the individual groups shouldn't be in alphabetical order. If not I'll sort this out.HappyVR 14:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC) Also the sub page Neopterygii contains far less families than mentioned on this page - I'm sure thats because it's a stub and will expand it eventually. Can someone confirm that the situation is not more complex.HappyVR 14:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Hola, HappyVR. Nice to see you helping out with the fishes pages. Let's not reorder the groups here; I think they are in a phylogenetic ordering of some kind IIRC. The tree of life Web site might help on that. Tkinias 14:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

(What's IIRC?) Thanks for your quick reply and the link - useful. But looking at say http://tolweb.org/Teleostei/15054 for the teleostei shows that the current page doesn't express the phylogenetic order that well really at the higher levels - it would really need some lines drawing in - raises the question of taxonomic vs. inferred evolutionary classification. I'll look to see if there is a separate page for fish phylogeny. Appreciate your point though and will leave the 'non-alphabet' order as it is then.HappyVR 14:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

IIRC = "If I Recall Correctly". See others at List of Internet slang phrases. -- Neil916 15:04, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Just verified that the order does in fact follow Tree of Life's basically cladistic ordering, but fitting it into the old-fashioned infraclass and superorder terms. So let's leave it alone. An explanatory note might be good, though. Tkinias 15:07, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it does. thats right - but what I meant was that the tree lines are absent so for instance the page doesn't show the suggested common ancestry of stenopterygii, cyclosquamata, scopelomorpha and acanthomorpha or that this group have a common ancestor with the Protacanthopterygii. Did that make sense? Would it be worth creating a 'fish evolution' sub page to show the cladistics a bit more clearly? I could try this (or a list make a start) at some point. I'll at least add a link to the tree of life project. (it looks like this project is good enough in many areas to be linked to much more often in fish pages - I hadn't really noticed this resource before.)HappyVR 15:24, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunately, Tree of Life is often quite out of date (ca. ten years, some times), and it has, for example, nothing for Perciformes, which are most of the fish I have worked on. But in the absence of anything else — FishBase doesn't give any info higher than family, and ITIS seems a bit iffy sometimes — it's all I have access to... I'm curious what the new Nelson edition gives; I don't have access to a copy at the moment. Oh, and a page on fish evolution is an interesting idea, but I'd want to have some source other than Tree of Life to go off of... Tkinias 23:48, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

There's http://www.palaeos.com] (which looks terrible by modern standards) and also http://www.fmnh.helsinki.fi/users/haaramo/index.htm (someone who has also contributed to paleos.com) that's the only other online sources I'm aware of - no idea how 'good' they are. I was pleased to see lots in Callichthys but the rest of the Siluriformes are almost empty - so it is a bit blotchy in coverage.HappyVR 00:12, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Paraphyly

The text states that the 'The [Holostei] (are) paraphyletic and tend to be abandoned', but it seems that the Chondrostei are also paraphyletic? Should this sentence just be moved to the relevent sub class articles or altered? Feedback or edits please. Also added a chondrostei page - if anyone want to expand on it.HappyVR 14:35, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, ignore that - I didn't get what was meant by 'tends to be abandsoned' silly me.HappyVR 14:59, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] ray-finned

How come there's no explanation of what "ray-finned" actually means?

(Above comment by anon with IP 0.112.223.203)

Heh. Good question. Let's add it ;) Tkinias 11:32, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I was wondering if this should be mentioned in Osteichthyes - correct me if I'm wrong - this includes the ray and lobe fin fishes - so the two types could be described here and the differences noted - with reference to what is actually meant by ray finned and lobe finned?

(One minor problem seems to be that the Osteichthyes article is quite difficult to find when just browsing via links - maybe including the Osteichthyes as a super-class in the taxobox would help - currently the next highest order shown in the Actinopterygii taxobox is Chordata - which misses the subdivision of that phylum.)

To make things worse Actinopterygii is labelled as a class in it's own page, but as an order in Osteichthyes? Maybe the Osteichthyes page should be clarified a bit and the Chordata page altered also to show more clearly that the lobe and ray finned fish are classes of the Osteichthyes.

(I hope I've got my facts straight).HappyVR 16:34, 2 July 2006 (UTC)