Day seven of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day six can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here.
On the seventh day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me…
- Seven basal euteleosts
- Six crown Otomorpha
- FIVE! BOH-NY TONGUES!
- Four elopomorphs
- Three Holosteans
- Two Chondrostei
- And a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii
Day 7 is a trio of clades from the basal level of the Euteleostomorphs. I honestly don’t fully get everything about how these relationships work…but from what I understand they are (among the crown groups) the sister group to the rest of the euteleostomorphs (the neoteleosts). It’s a pretty diverse bunch; basal-most is the Lepidogalaxiiformes, represented by the monotypic Salamanderfish which is…pretty weird. It even has a ‘neck’ that it can move around. Next up the tree, we have the Protacanthopterygii, which features a bunch of well-known and popular fish like trout, char, salmon and pike, as well as some deep sea oddities like barreleyes and a variety of smelts and galaxiids. Finally, we have the Stomiati, a clade that includes some smelts, icefishes, and some other deep sea fish like hatchetfish and viperfish.
For the most part, figures can be found to represent many of the fish in these clades, but in order to have a representative of the Lepidogalaxii I needed to commission a figure of the Salamanderfish. It’s okay…but a real one would be great. The Protacanthopterygii, given the fish included, definitely has a number of figures, but honestly I don’t think any company has really taken advantage of the popularity of fish like trout and salmon (that was easily one of the most popular overall offerings from the Replica Toy Fish series, and really should have been one of the first sets from Toy Fish Factory). The figures I’ve chosen to represent the clade include a Colorata White-spotted Char, Bullyland Northern Pike and Powan, and a Colorata Barreleye. The Stomiatii, given the species, is mostly represented by Japanese figures even now, although deep sea fish have been included by other companies as well; there are some figures of the smelt-related fish, but I went with the Colorata Viperfish and the Takara Hatchetfish
Day eight brings us a whole lot of clades, most of which are poorly represented as figures!
