BLUEGILLS AND SUNFISH

[TOM A.]

Can someone tell me why this fish group is not in the cichlid family. Is it because they live in a colder water temp. range.

 

[payara]

they are not related at all,thats like saying gar and piranah are related.

 

[sandtiger]

Because they are in the sunfish family (Centrarchidae) and the sunfish family is not related to the cichlid family. One key difference is the lateral line. A sunfish has a complete lateral line while cichlids have a broken lateral line, this is not the only difference but it's an easy one to understand.

 

[sandtiger]

they are not related at all,thats like saying gar and piranah are related.

Not quite, sunfish and cichlids belong to the same order (perciformes). Gars and pirahna belong not only to different familys but to different orders as well. Gars are Lepisosteiformes and piranhas are Characiformes.

 

[TOM A.]

Oscars and angelfish are cichlids but they dont look alike

 

[dredcon]

Fish are classified by the presence/absence of derived characteristics, not on the looks alone.

 

[ewurm]

Classification is based part on sciences such as genetics, part on opinion and part on guesswork.

 

[fisher12889]

i know they may seem alot alike, but they are completely different

 

[sandtiger]

Oscars and angelfish are cichlids but they dont look alike

No but they share enough other characteristics that make them related. Animals are not classified by how they look.

 

[TOM A.]

Well, I have a lot to learn. I did some looking and found out the sunfish family and the cichlids are not even close related. In fact , there is only 30 kinds of sunfish species and all come from N.America. I know this all sound boring but I like the sunfish . Some day a have to set up a tank full of them.