SCIENTIFIC SYSTEM CLASSIFICATION OF BONYTONGUE SPECIES

[WyldFya]

Unfortunately all of these will still be illegal in the US. Nice find icthyophile.

 

[redtailfool]

stickied. Thanks for the info Kriztu !

 

[kriztu]

Hey, fishbase apparently has three other purportedly valid species listed in the genus Scleropages:

S. aureus
S. legendrei
S. macrocephalus

All hail from Indonesia and were first described in 2003 by Pouyard, Sudarto, and Teugels.

Does anyone know anything about these?

not a thing! tanx for the info

 

[kriztu]

I FOUND IT!:

Scleropages formosus color varieties are separate species

dude, i hope you can diagram all this and post it here for everyone to get updated. this sure is new info for me and im taking notes right now. tanx for the research

 

[Jesse]

Sheesh, you're asking someone who can't even legally keep Asian arows to sort this out. When in doubt, I would follow the abstract of the article I found, since that's straight from the three ichthyologists who described the three new Scleropages species. The abstract indicates:

S. aureus = RTG
S. legendrei = Super Red
S. macrocephalus = "silver" varieties, including those w/ yellow or grey tails

That would leave all other Asian arows as S. formosus, i.e., greens and x-backs/Malayan, is my guess. I still have no idea what a "silver" variety is, but I have no expertise whatsoever in Asian arows, only general taxonomic knowledge and experience in keeping U.S legal bonytongues.

 

[meiling]

For those of you entranced by evolution and Darwinisn, David Quammen , is an author that retakes Darwins ideas and writes some incredible books. Song Of The Dodo is about evolutionary biology and extinction. If you like to read, it'll knock your socks off.

 

[kriztu]

any real reason why greens and x-backs have the same classification? all i see is the same body proportions

 

[meiling]

In looking and names and dates, I sould agree with civier, 1829 because of the amount of work he did. He classified before that, so I think in his world, he's right, it just isn't clear.

 

[islander671]

This maybe a dumb question, but where does the African Arowana fit in to all this?

 

[Jesse]

This maybe a dumb question, but where does the African Arowana fit in to all this?

The African arowana (Heterotis niloticus) and the arapaima/piracucu (Arapaima gigas) have recently been placed in a separate family Arapaimatidae that is within the order Osteoglossiformes. The two species were previously part of the subfamily Heterotinae, within the family Osteoglossidae, but, as mentioned, were recently elevated to a separate family within the same order. Thus, African arowana and arapaima are no longer placed within the same family as the true arowanas of the genera Scleropages and Osteoglossum.