Fishmas – Fauna Figures

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Five!

Day five of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day four can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the fifth day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... FIVE! BOH-NY TONGUES! Four elopomorphs Three Holosteans Two Chondrostei And a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Five is so allowed! Day five is the Osteoglossomorpha, the bonytongues. As a group they are generally pretty familiar, with a broad range of morphologies, habitats and sizes (including one…

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December 17, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Four!

Day four of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day three can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the fourth day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Four elopomorphs born from leptocephaliThree HolosteansTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Four is by no means too many... On day four, we reach the Elopomorpha, as a group of fish related by having a leptocephalus stage. It's a fairly diverse group of fish, including…

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December 16, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Three!

Day three of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day two can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the third day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Three genera of HolosteanTwo ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Three's...not quite a crowd Next up the family tree, the Holostei, represented by the three modern genera. Two are gars, Lepisosteus and Atractosteus (the latter of which are notable for their heavier snouts and generally…

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December 15, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day Two!

Day two of the Twelve Days of Fishmas! Day one can be found here. The tag for the whole set will be here. On the first day of Fishmas cladistics gave to me... Two orders of ChondrosteiAnd a bichir at the base of Actinopterygii Two's company! Next up the family tree, the Chondrostei, represented by the modern Sturgeon (Acipenseriformes) and Paddlefish (Polyodontiformes). This clade is the basal (living) representative of the broader 'Actinopteri' clade of actinopterygians. The two figures chosen…

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December 14, 2021

Clades & Grades / FigureTales / Fishmas2021

12 Days of FISHMAS! Day One!

So...I have been mulling on this for a few years now--specifically, upon reading through the article Phylogenetic Classification of Bony Fishes (Betancur-R et al. BMC Evolutionary Biology (2017) 17:162) with a few modifications, especially from Comprehensive phylogeny of ray-finned fishes (Actinopterygii) based on transcriptomic and genomic data ((PNAS June 12, 2018 115 (24) 6249-6254)). I love cladograms. I love organizing things. I love animal figures, and I love fish. And so, I decided to work through the Actinopterygii family tree…

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December 13, 2021