Thornfish

Thornfishes
Cottoperca gobio

Drawing by Angel

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Perciformes
Suborder: Notothenioidei
Family: Bovichtidae
T. N. Gill, 1861
Genera[1]

Bovichtus
Cottoperca
Halaphritis

The thornfishes are a family, Bovichtidae, of fishes in the order Perciformes. The family is spelled Bovichthyidae in J. S. Nelson's Fishes of the World. They are native to coastal waters off Australia, New Zealand, and South America, and to rivers and lakes of southeast Australia and Tasmania.

Phylogenetic analysis of morphological characters has revealed that the family Bovichtidae is not a monophyletic group.[2][3]

Genera

Currently, three genera are included in this family, with the genus Pseudaphritis (Castelnau, 1872) now being placed in its own family, Pseudaphtitidae.[1][4]

References

  1. 1.0 1.1 Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2013). "Bovichtidae" in FishBase. February 2013 version.
  2. Balushkin, A. V. (1992) "Classification, phylogenetic relationships, and origins of the families of the suborder Notothenioidei (Perciformes)" Journal of Ichthyology 32: pp. 90–110
  3. Lecointre, G. et al. (1997) "Molecular phylogeny of the Antarctic fishes: paraphyly of the Bovichitidae and no indication for the monophyly of the Notothenioidei (Teleostei)" Polar Biology 18: pp. 193–208
  4. Eastman, J. T. & Eakin, R. R. (2000): An updated species list for notothenioid fish(Perciformes; Notothenioidei), with comments on Antarctic species. Archive of Fishery and Marine Research, 48(1), 2000, 11–20
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