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Re: American Flagflish



> Date: Mon, 27 Apr 1998 21:55:44 -0400
> From: "John & Denise Haydt" <haydt at voicenet_com>
> 
> With all of the Flagfish discussion going on I decided to look it up.  Was
> listed in one reference in the 'Toothed Carp' family.  One LFS guy told me
> it was a Cichlid.  An APDer called it a Killiefish.  Anyone care to clear
> this up?

It's a cyprinodontoid, also a killifish.  Cyprinodont means "toothed carp"
or maybe "carp toothed".  At any rate, at one time there were 'livebearing
tooth carps' and 'egg laying tooth carps'  then they were split up by method
of reproduction, then it because apparent that live bearing had arisen
several times independently among the tooth carps, so they put them back
together and split them up again differently.  This work was done by Lyn
Parenti, et al, if anyone cares to look it up.

At any rate, it's a killifish, even if it may be more closely related to 
some livebearers than to some other killifish.  Killifish is a vernacular
term, and it works.

The confusion with cichlids may be because unlike almost every other 
killifish, the male looks after the eggs and young fry.  Parental
behaviour is characteristic of cichlids, which have probably been
unrelated to tooth carps for at least 200 million years.

All that said, can someone sell me some American Flagfish (Jordanella
floridae) eggs?  I'm thinking about getting back into killies again.