Chapter 12 – Relationships of Lower Euteleostean Fishes

TLDR: In the first Interrelationships of Fishes lower euteleosts were omitted and Fink (1984a) summarized the history of protacanthopterygians as "erosion" and "attrition, most notably at the hands of Rosen (1973)"

Abstract: In the first Interrelationships of Fishes lower euteleosts, or "protacanthopterygians" as they were then called, were omitted, with only a comment in the Preface citing Weitzman (1967, on osmeroids and stomiatoids), McDowall (1969, on osmeroids and galaxioids), Rosen and Greenwood (1970, on gonorynchiforms and ostariophysans), Greenwood and Rosen (1971, on argentinoids and alepocephaloids), and Nelson (1970b, on salangids and argentinids; 1972, on esocoids and galaxioids). Ten years later, in Ontogeny and Systematics of Fishes, Fink (1984a) summarized the history of protacanthopterygians as "erosion" and "attrition, most notably at the hands of Rosen (1973)" [in the first Interrelationships of Fishes]. Fink then saw the problems as these: (1) What are the relationships of the Esocoidei? (2) What are the relationships of the Ostariophysi? Do these fishes lie above or below the Esocoidei? (3) What is the pattern of relationships among the traditional "salmoniform" taxa, exclusive of Esocoidei and Ostariophysi? (4) What are the relationships of and within the Argentinoidei (sensu Greenwood and Rosen, 1971, i.e., argentinoids plus alepocephaloids)? (5) What are the relationships of and within the Osmeroidei? (6) What are the relationships of and within Salmonidae? (7) Where does Lepidogalaxias belong? (8) What are the relationships within stomiiform fishes? (9) What of the Myctophoidei, as recognized by Greenwood et al. (1966, i.e., Aulopiformes and Myctophiformes in current terminology)? In that agenda, items (8) and (9) are treated elsewhere in this volume and do not concern us, but items (1) through (7) do. Some classifications and/or cladograms of lower euteleosts, dating back to the first application of cladistic method, are summarized in Fig. 1. As is obvious from incongruence between all the patterns in Fig. 1, there has been protracted argument on how lower euteleostean groups are interrelated, how they are related to neoteleosts (stomiiforms and eurypterygians, Johnson, 1992), and what group is basal to other euteleosts. The most substantial treatment of these problems is in Begle's (1991,1992) cladistic analyses of Osmeroidei (1991) and Argentinoidei (1992) (Fig. 1G). Begle's two papers resulted in the cladogram in Fig. 2, in which the terminals are the genera or higher taxa sampled in his matrix. His classification (Begle, 1991, fig.l; 1992, table 2) to family level, without ranks above the superfamily and sequenced according to the conventions of Wiley (1981), was as follows: