Overcomplicated fish details

[esoxlucius]

Something i've often wondered and i'll give a typical example below. I've used the giant gourami just because I have one but it works for any fish. You look the fish up, and you are bombarded with, what seems to be, just scientific mumbo jumbo, to me anyway.

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Anabantiformes
Family: Osphronemidae
Genus: Osphronemus
Species: O.Goramy

And on top of that lot, if you take my red tailed giant gourami into consideration, yet another part of the family, it's latin name is Osphronemus Laticlavius. So that would be EIGHT sub descriptions of one fish!!!!

Why the hell is it so complicated, what do they all mean?

 

[Hendre]

It's not at all complicated, the taxonomic ladder is used to classify all living things in a reasonable order.
Kingdom: Belongs to animals (Others include plants, fungi etc)
Phylum: Belongs to Chordates, or animals with a backbone and nerve cord at some stage of their life cycle
Class: Actinopterygii are ray-finned fish. More primitive fish such as lungfish or coelacanth are lobe-finned (Sarcopterygii)
Order: Anabantiformes - contains many families including channa, gourami, Ctenopoma etc
Family: A bit more specific now, Osphronemus is all the gouramis (minus kissing)
Genus: Osphronemus - a group of closely related species
Species: The final rung at the bottom of the ladder refers to the individual species of the genus.

At face value, just the genus and species name is displayed, the rest is simply taxonomic information for those looking back a bit further. This is usually taught in schools nowadays. Another example can be Homo sapiens

​

You can read more here: https://www.ck12.org/book/ck-12-life-science-for-middle-school/section/2.3/
This is essentially the system Linnaeus came up with a long time ago to better organise life in a tidy hierarchy based on their relationships to one another. This was usually done through morphology (physical appearance and form) but nowadays phylogenetics (comparison of DNA) is used extensively for more precise comparison of species and populations.

 

[duanes]

There is mumbo jumbo in every field of study the deeper we get.
A lawyer speaks legalize, because specific meanings are important.
Medicalize is another.
Even plumbers have a lingo most of the rest of us don't have a clue about.
A casual aquarist may not think these scientific terms and their meanings areimportant, but...
and I'll use new world cichlids as an example because they are my thing, and I see dozens of posts here on MFK about this...

When an aquarist goes in to buy a "red terror", or a jaguar cichlid (non-mumbo jumbo terms) and it grows up to be something else, who is at fault?
In many cases a LFS and its employees (most not hip to important mumbo jumbo, or even care) will sell perhaps 3 different species, or even two separate genera as a jaguar.
I've seen Parachromis managuense, Parachromis multifasciatus, or Parachromis freidrichstalli, and even Nandopsis tetracanthus sold as jaguars .
Another....Red terrors could be Mayaheros uropthalmus (the first cichlid historically called red terror in aquariums circles) or Mesoheros festae (now sort of the more widely called red terror).
If the aquarist knows his or her mumbo jumbo, there is less chance of being fooled about either, because scientists are very clear in their mumbo jumbo way, about what species is "what", its not just about whether a cichlid is red or not, or whether it has jaguar like spots.
most cichlids can be separated by number of spines, and other specific characteristics, such as number of bars, spangling, dentition, and the like.
If the aquarist wants to get a red terror "festae", it is easily differenialted from "red terror" uropthalmus, by just a few those specific(species) characteristics if that aquarists has dug deep enough, or cares to know.
I've even seen Tilapia (African Oreochromis mossambicus ) listed as Chiapaheros grammodes (Mexican) in a LFS, if I hadn't looked a while, and just went by the sales tag, I would have been duped. Although their shape as juvies is similar , the tilapia spot visible on all young Oreochromis is a dead give away.

 

[esoxlucius]

I think i've learned more from this message than my previous 2014 messages combined!! Lol. I expect this type of knowledge from an old codger like duanes but young Hendre , way'd go, you're quite the scholar young man. Lol.

 

[skjl47]

Hello; I went to a lot of trouble to learn the taxonomy stuff decades ago. I even came to admire Linnaean system and the man him self. Think I still have some books on the taxonomy of fishes. I suppose I could try to be clever and say since I had to learn it then every one else ought to as well. Like the periodic table this system is very useful so is worth having around
One thing I will note is the Latin slips away from me sometimes. I guess it is a case of my not using it much any more.
Another thing I would have liked to do is to discover a new species and get to name it. Duanes might have a shot at that where he lives. An even better shot if insects are looked at.

 

[Hendre]

I think i've learned more from this message than my previous 2014 messages combined!! Lol. I expect this type of knowledge from an old codger like duanes but young Hendre , way'd go, you're quite the scholar young man. Lol.

This is just stuff we touched on in school last year and uni this year, sort of the basis of biology honestly

 

[neutrino]

For common purposes you can ignore the highest level classifications, since they will be common to all fish. All are animalia (animals), all are chordata (spinal chord in rough terms, but there's more to it). After that, Actinopterygii essentially means rayed fish, fish with spines in their fins, pretty much most of the fish we keep, except rays.

Then it gets a little more interesting in telling you something about your fish, including which fish it's related to. For example, follow the ladder up from gouramis and snakeheads, and they're both Anabantiformes. Follow the ladder up from genus Luciocephalus (pikeheads) and they're in the gourami family. Do a little digging and you can learn that crenicichla (pike cichlids) are geophagines, that Satanoperca are more closely related to appistogramma than to geophagus, and while retroculus resemble geophagus somewhat, they're not closely related at all. Depending which fish interest you and how deep you want to dive you can learn some interesting things.

There are limitations though. Some lists skip a step or two, not all are up to date, biologists don't always agree on the specifics, etc. At a certain level of detail you might find obsolete information, contradictory information, etc.

 

[Rass]

I picked up a 2" female motaguense at my local fish store one time. They had it labeled as a red tiger managuense. I could tell it wasn't a jag, and because of the red tiger nomenclature I figured it was likely a mota. I asked them about the mislabeling and they looked at me like I was from outer space. No clue what I was talking about. Most fish stores hire young people that may have a passing interest in pets but they are mainly there for the paycheck and not too concerned if something goes out the door under the wrong name. I picked it up on the hunch and it grew into beautiful female mota as I had thought, but the fact that they weren't even sure what I was talking about tells me that fish could have been anything and still labeled the same way.

 

[Backfromthedead]

I've experienced a lot of the same, even at niche aquarium stores staffed by the local "experts". Usually, there is an old timer running the joint thats been doing so for decades, and they are simply set in their ways in regards to methods and knowledge, unwilling to adapt or inform themselves of all the advancements the hobby has made in more recent times. These old timers teach the young employees how they run the shop and that's what you get.

I'm confident that perhaps only 10-15% of fishkeepers research and immerse themselves in the hobby and science behind it like those us here on MFK, and the slipshod, subjective approach to it found in most LFS I've visited is proof enough. I often find myself tempted to lay down some knowledge when confronted by wild inaccuracies in nomenclature or poor husbandry practices, but never do.

On a related note, I think running a business intended to profit and the rigors associated with it perhaps can damper the joy in learning and advancing in the hobby.

 

[twentyleagues]

I was taught this in high school maybe even middle school and being in ap bio in highschool it was essential. Things were spoken of in "latin terminology".

I have always had an interest in learning to speak latin but since it's considered a "dead" language it's/was hard to find entry level classes and therefore never did. If I had been pushed by the right people at the correct times and ways during my education I may have become a biologist of some sort. But really I just thought latin sounded cool and wanted to tell someone off in latin....lol.