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Evolutionary biology

A flourishing of fish forms

Nature volume 464, pages 840–842 (2010)Cite this article

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According to an innovative exercise in 'morphospace analysis', modern fish owe their stunning diversity in part to an ecological cleaning of the slate by the mass extinction at the end of the Cretaceous.

Fish come in a bewildering diversity of shapes: trumpetfish, sea horses, pufferfish, cowfish and anglerfish are just a few examples. Size, too, varies tremendously in living species. Some gobies reach less than a centimetre as adults, whereas the oarfish stretches well over 12 metres and the ocean sunfish can weigh more than a car. These groups, along with almost two-thirds of all other fish, belong to a particularly conspicuous section of the fish tree of life, the spiny-finned fishes (Acanthomorpha). With 18,000 species, spiny-fins comprise almost a third of all vertebrates.

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Figure 1: Explorations in morphospace.
Figure 2: Examples of spiny-fin diversity.

HAPLOCHROMIS/WIKIMEDIA

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Michael Alfaro and Francesco Santini are in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, USA. michaelalfaro@ucla.edu,

    Michael Alfaro & Francesco Santini

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  1. Michael Alfaro
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  2. Francesco Santini
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Alfaro, M., Santini, F. A flourishing of fish forms. Nature 464, 840–842 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/464840a

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