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Cottidae

Family of ray-finned fishes From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Cottidae
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The Cottidae are a family of fish in the superfamily Cottoidea, the sculpins. It is the largest sculpin family, with about 275 species in 70 genera.[2] They are referred to simply as cottids to avoid confusion with sculpins of other families.[2]

Quick Facts Scientific classification, Subfamilies and genera ...

Cottids are distributed worldwide, especially in boreal and colder temperate climates.[2] The center of diversity is the northern Pacific Ocean.[2] Species occupy many types of aquatic habitats, including marine and fresh waters, and deep and shallow zones. A large number occur in near-shore marine habitat types, such as kelp forests and shallow reefs. They can be found in estuaries and in bodies of fresh water.[2]

Most cottids are small fish, under 10 cm (3.9 in) in length.[3]

The earliest fossil remains of cottids are otoliths potentially assignable to Enophrys euglyphus from the Early Eocene-aged London Clay of England. The earliest known skeletal remains of cottids are of Cottus cervicornis (taxonomy uncertain) from the Early Oligocene of Belgium. Cottids become more common in the fossil record from the Miocene onwards.[4]

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Taxonomy

The Cottidae was first recognised as a taxonomic grouping by the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1831.[1] The composition of the family and its taxonomic relationships have been the subject of some debate among taxonomists. The 5th edition of Fishes of the World retains a rather conservative classification, although it includes the families Comephoridae and Abbyssocottidae as subfamilies of the Cottidae recognising that these taxa are very closely related to some of the freshwater sculpins in the genus Cottus.[5] Other workers have found that Cottidae is largely restricted to the freshwater sculpins, i.e. Cottus, Leptocottus, Mesocottus, Trachidermus, and the species flock in and around Lake Baikal, and the marine genera are placed in the Psychrolutidae.[6]

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Genera

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Artedius corallinus
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Myoxocephalus scorpius

The genera of the family include:[5][7]

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See also

References

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