Teleost fi shes (Teleostei) Zuogang Penga,c, Rui Diogob, and Shunping Hea,* Until recently, the classiA cation of teleosts pioneered aInstitute of Hydrobiology, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, by Greenwood et al. (5) and expanded on by Patterson Wuhan, 430072, China; bDepartment of Anthropology, The George and Rosen (6) has followed the arrangement proposed c Washington University, Washington, DC, 20052, USA; Present by Nelson (7) and today is still reP ected in A sh textbooks address: School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, and papers. In it, species were placed in four major GA 30332, USA *To whom correspondence should be addressed (
[email protected]) groups: Osteoglossomorpha, Elopomorpha, Otocephala, and Euteleostei. 7 is division was based on multiple morphological characters and molecular evidence. Abstract Based on morphological characters, Osteoglossomor- pha was considered as the most plesiomorphic living tel- Living Teleost fishes (~26,840 sp.) are grouped into 40 eosts by several works (6, 7). However, the anatomical orders, comprising the Infraclass Teleostei of the Class studies of Arratia (8–10) supported that elopomorphs, Actinopterygii. With few exceptions, morphological and not osteoglossomorphs, are the most plesiomor- and molecular phylogenetic analyses have supported phic extant teleosts. 7 is latter view was supported by four subdivisions within Teleostei: Osteoglossomorpha, the results of the most extensive morphologically based Elopomorpha, Otocephala (= Ostarioclupeomorpha), and cladistic analysis published so far on osteichthyan high- Euteleostei. Despite the progress that has been made in er-level phylogeny, which included 356 osteological and recent years for the systematics of certain teleost groups, myological characters and 80 terminal taxa, including the large-scale pattern of teleost phylogeny remains open.