Scleropages
| Asia-Pacific arowanas Temporal range: Possible Late Cretaceous record
| |
|---|---|
| Scleropages jardinii | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Actinopterygii |
| Order: | Osteoglossiformes |
| Family: | Osteoglossidae |
| Genus: | Scleropages Günther, 1864 |
| Type species | |
| Scleropages leichardti Günther, 1864
| |
| Native range map | |
Scleropages, the Asia-Pacific arowanas, is a genus of fish in the family Osteoglossidae found in Asia and Australia.[1] All of these species are carnivorous and have great jumping ability. Fossil evidence supports their former presence in Europe & Africa.[2]
Taxonomy
These species are highly valued as aquarium fish, particularly by those from Asian cultures. In 2003, a study redescribed several naturally occurring color varieties of S. formosus into four separate species.[3] The majority of researchers dispute these redescriptions, arguing that the published data are insufficient to justify recognizing more than one Southeast Asian species of Scleropages and that divergent haplotypes used to distinguish the color strains into isolated species were found within a single color strain, contradicting the findings. They are considered monotypic, consisting of closely related haplotypes based on color.[4][5]
Evolution
The unusual distribution of arowanas in both Asia and Australia (last connected during the Mesozoic), despite their freshwater habits, is unique and the subject of several competing hypotheses about when the ancestor of the Australian arowanas diverged from the ancestor of the Asian arowanas. Kumazawa & Nishida (2000) hypothesized that the two clades diverged about 140 million years ago, during the Early Cretaceous period, as a product of continental vicariance, when Insular India (containing the Asian Scleropages) & Madagascar broke off from the Australian & Antarctic landmass, fragmenting a population of ancestral Scleropages that inhabited East Gondwana during the Early Cretaceous.[6] Lavoue (2015) also found evidence for a Cretaceous divergence between these two clades, but found it to post-date the fragmentation of East Gondwana, suggesting that the ancestral Scleropages dispersed over marine habitats to its present range during the Late Cretaceous.[7] More recently, Cioffi et al (2019) firmly found that the divergence between the Asian and Australian arowanas only dates to the late Eocene, about 35 million years ago, suggesting that the current distribution of Scleropages is best explained by a late Paleogene marine dispersal between Asia and Australia, followed by extirpation of the genus in marine habitats, leaving only the freshwater species. However, fossils of this genus have not yet been definitively identified from marine deposits.[8]
The genus had a much wider distribution during the early Cenozoic, with fossil remains known from the Paleocene of Niger and Belgium,[2] and from the Eocene of China and Indonesia.[9][10]
Species
There are currently 4 recognized species in this genus:
| Image | Scientific name | Common name | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scleropages formosus (S. Müller & Schlegel, 1840) | Asian bonytongue; green arowana,[11] Asian arowana | Thailand, Cambodia, southern Vietnam, Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, West Borneo | |
| Scleropages inscriptus T. R. Roberts, 2012 [12] | Myanmar bonytongue, Scripted arowana, inscriptus arowana | Myanmar | |
| Scleropages jardinii (Saville-Kent, 1892) | Australian bonytongue, northern barramundi, Jardini arowana | Gulf of Carpentaria drainage system, west to the Adelaide River in the Northern Territory, throughout northern Queensland and in New Guinea | |
| Scleropages leichardti Günther, 1864 | Spotted bonytongue/Saratoga[13] | Fitzroy River system Australia |
The following fossil species are also known:
- †Scleropages sanshuiensis Zhang, 2020 (Early Eocene of Guangdong, China)[10]
- †Scleropages sinensis Zhang & Wilson, 2017 (Early Eocene of Hunan & Hubei, China)[9]
In addition to these two fossil species known from complete skeletons, fossil remains of indeterminate Scleropages are also known from Middle Paleocene-aged freshwater deposits of Belgium, Late Paleocene-aged freshwater deposits of Niger, the Eocene-aged freshwater Sangkarewang Formation of Sumatra, Indonesia, and Neogene-aged deposits of Australia. The genus may potentially date to the Late Cretaceous, as fossil osteoglossid otoliths from the Maastrichtian-aged Intertrappean Beds of India closely resemble those of this genus, as does a partial jaw with teeth from the Campanian of France.[2]
Phylogeny
Phylogeny based on the work of Pouyaud, Sudarto & Teugels 2003.[3]
| Osteoglossidae |
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References
- ^ Froese, Rainer; Pauly, Daniel (eds.). "Species in genus Scleropages". FishBase. October 2016 version.
- ^ a b c Taverne, L. (2009): On the presence of the osteoglossid genus Scleropages in the Paleocene of Niger, Africa (Teleostei, Osteoglossomorpha). Bulletin de l'Institut royal des Sciences naturelles de Belgique, Science de la Terre, 79: 161–167.
- ^ a b Pouyaud, L.; Sudarto; Teugels, G.G. (2003). "The different colour varieties of the Asian arowana Scleropages formosus (Osteoglossidae) are distinct species: morphologic and genetic evidences". Cybium. 27 (4): 287–305.
- ^ Mohd-Shamsudin, M.I.; Zahedi Fard, M.; Mather, P.B.; Suleiman, Z.; Hassan, R.; Othman, R.Y.; Bhassu, S. (2011). "Molecular characterization of relatedness among colour variants of Asian Arowana (Scleropages formosus)". Gene. 490 (1–2): 47–53. doi:10.1016/j.gene.2011.08.025. PMID 21945689.
- ^ Mu, X.-D.; Song, H.-M.; Wang, X.-J.; Yang, Y.-X.; Luo, D.; Gu, D.-E.; Luo, J.-R.; Hu, Y.-C. (2012). "Genetic variability of the Asian arowana, Scleropages formosus, based on mitochondrial DNA genes". Biochemical Systematics and Ecology. 44: 141–148. Bibcode:2012BioSE..44..141M. doi:10.1016/j.bse.2012.04.017.
- ^ Kumazawa, Yoshinori; Nishida, Mutsumi (2000-12-01). "Molecular Phylogeny of Osteoglossoids: A New Model for Gondwanian Origin and Plate Tectonic Transportation of the Asian Arowana". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 17 (12): 1869–1878. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026288. ISSN 0737-4038. PMID 11110903.
- ^ Lavoué, Sébastien (2015). "Testing a time hypothesis in the biogeography of the arowana genus Scleropages (Osteoglossidae)". Journal of Biogeography. 42 (12): 2427–2439. Bibcode:2015JBiog..42.2427L. doi:10.1111/jbi.12585. ISSN 1365-2699.
- ^ de Bello Cioffi, Marcelo; Ráb, Petr; Ezaz, Tariq; Antonio Carlos Bertollo, Luiz; Lavoué, Sebastien; Aguiar de Oliveira, Ezequiel; Sember, Alexandr; Franco Molina, Wagner; Henrique Santos de Souza, Fernando; Majtánová, Zuzana; Liehr, Thomas; Basheer Hamid Al-Rikabi, Ahmed; Fernanda Yano, Cassia; Viana, Patrik; Feldberg, Eliana (2019-09-02). "Deciphering the Evolutionary History of Arowana Fishes (Teleostei, Osteoglossiformes, Osteoglossidae): Insight from Comparative Cytogenomics". International Journal of Molecular Sciences. 20 (17): 4296. doi:10.3390/ijms20174296. ISSN 1422-0067. PMC 6747201. PMID 31480792.
- ^ a b Jiang-Yong Zhang; Mark V. H. Wilson (2017). "First complete fossil Scleropages (Osteoglossomorpha)". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 55 (1): 1–23.
- ^ a b Jiang-Yong Zhang (2020). "A New Species of Scleropages (Osteoglossidae, Osteoglossomorpha) from the Eocene of Guangdong, China". Vertebrata PalAsiatica. 58 (2): 100–119. doi:10.19615/j.cnki.1000-3118.191213.
- ^ van Oijen, M.J.P.; van der Meij, S.E.T. (2013). "The types of Osteoglossum formosum Müller & Schlegel, 1840 (Teleostei, Osteoglossidae)" (PDF). Zootaxa. 3722 (3): 361–371. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.3722.3.5. PMID 26171532.
- ^ Roberts, T.R. (2012): Scleropages inscriptus, a new fish species from the Tananthayi or Tenasserim River basin, Malay Peninsula of Myanmar (Osteoglossidae: Osteoglossiformes). aqua, International Journal of Ichthyology, 18 (2): 113–118.
- ^ Pusey, B.J.; Fisher, C.; Maclaine, J. (2016). "On the nature of Scleropages leichardti Günther, 1864 (Pisces: Osteoglossidae)". Zootaxa. 4173 (1): 75–84. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4173.1.7. PMID 27701205.