Anguilloidei

European eels Anguilla anguilla, copyright Dmitriy Konstantinov.

Belongs within: Anguilliformes.

The Anguilloidei are a group of eels in which the premaxillaries are fused with the mesethmoid to form a tooth-bearing bone at the front of the upper jaw (Bond 1996). They include the typical eels of the genus Anguilla, species of which spend the greater part of their post-larval life cycle in fresh water before returning to the oceans to breed.

Anguilloidei [Anguilloidea]
    |--Milananguilla [Milananguillidae] P93
    |    `--M. lehmani Blot 1978 P93
    |--Anguilloididae P93
    |    |--Anguilloides branchiostegalis (Eastman 1905) P93
    |    `--Veronanguilla ruffoi Blot 1978 P93
    |--Heterenchelyidae B96
    |    |--Heterenchelys [incl. Pythonichthys] B96
    |    |--Panturichthys B96
    |    `--Heterenchelyidarum richardsi Nolf 1988 P93
    |--Moringuidae [Ratabouridae] IM01
    |    |  i. s.: ‘Leptocephalus’ tuberculatus Castle 1965 C65
    |    |--Neoconger tuberculatus (Castle 1965) S99b
    |    |--Stilbiscus Jordan & Bollman 1889 [incl. Anguillichthys Mowbray 1927] C65
    |    |    `--S. bahamensis (Mowbray 1927) C65
    |    |--Aphthalmichthys M58
    |    |    |--A. bicolor (Kaup 1856) [=Moringua bicolor] M58
    |    |    |--A. floresiana (Weber & de Beaufort 1916) [=Moringua floresiana] M58
    |    |    |--A. macrocephalus Bleeker 1863 [=Moringua macrocephalus] M58
    |    |    `--A. macrochir (Bleeker 1855) [=Moringua macrochir] M58
    |    `--Moringua Gray 1831 TP86
    |         |--*M. raitaborua Ham-Buch. 1822 S62
    |         |--M. abbreviata (Bleeker 1863) TP86 [=Aphthalmichthys abbreviatus M58]
    |         |--‘Leptocephalus’ diptychus Eigenmann & Kennedy 1900 C65
    |         |--M. edwardsi IM01
    |         |--M. javanica (Kaup 1856) TP86 [=Aphthalmichthys javanicus M58]
    |         |--M. lumbricoidea JR10
    |         |--M. microchir Bleeker 1853 S62 [=Aphthalmichthys microchir M58; incl. M. ferruginea Bliss 1883 S62]
    |         `--M. raitaborua Hamilton-Buchanan 1822 C65
    `--Anguillidae IM01
         |--Eoanguilla leptoptera (Agassiz 1835) P93
         `--Anguilla IM01
              |--A. amboinensis JR10
              |--A. anguilla (Linnaeus 1758) SE08
              |--A. annosa Stinton 1975 P93
              |--A. australis Richardson 1841 S99a
              |--A. bengalensis CS77
              |--A. bicolor McClelland 1844 S99a
              |    |--A. b. bicolor AC90
              |    `--A. b. pacifica Schmidt 1932 AC90
              |--A. celebesensis Kaup 1856 (see below for synonymy) M58
              |--A. chrysypa D56
              |--A. dieffenbachii WH02
              |--A. ignota G88
              |--A. interioris Whitley 1938 S99a
              |--A. japonica Temminck & Schlegel 1846 S99a
              |--A. malgumora Schlegel in Kaup 1846 [incl. A. borneensis] S99a
              |--A. manillensis JR10
              |--A. marmorata Quoy & Gaimard 1824 AC90
              |--A. mauritiania Bennett 1831 [=Muraena mauritiania; incl. A. labiata Weber 1908] M58
              |--A. megastoma Kaup 1856 S99a
              |--A. obscura Günther 1871 M58
              |--A. pachyura G88
              |--A. reinhardtii Steindachner 1867 M58
              |--A. rostrata (LeSueur 1817) ST02 [incl. A. texana Günther 1870 F16]
              |--A. spengeli Weber 1912 M58
              `--A. vulgaris B96

Inorganic: Anguilla japonica minilorientalis Okamura 1987 O87

Anguilla celebesensis Kaup 1856 [=Muraena celebesensis; incl. A. aneitensis Macleay 1880, A. otaheitensis Günther 1910] M58

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[AC90] Allen, G. R., & D. Coates. 1990. An ichthyological survey of the Sepik River, Papua New Guinea. Records of the Western Australian Museum Supplement 34: 31–116.

[B96] Bond, C. E. 1996. Biology of Fishes 2^nd ed. Saunders College Publishing: Fort Worth.

[C65] Castle, P. H. J. 1965. Moringuid leptocephali in Australasian waters. Transactions of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Zoology 7 (7): 125–133.

[CS77] Cramp, S., & K. E. L. Simmons (eds) 1977. Handbook of the Birds of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa: The Birds of the Western Palaearctic vol. 1. Ostrich to Ducks. Oxford University Press: Oxford.

[D56] Dawes, B. 1956. The Trematoda with special reference to British and other European forms. University Press: Cambridge.

[F16] Fowler, H. W. 1916. The fishes of Trinidad, Grenada, and St. Lucia, British West Indies. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 67 (3): 520–548.

[G88] Gray, J. 1988. Evolution of the freshwater ecosystem: the fossil record. Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 62: 1–214.

[IM01] Inoue, J. G., M. Miya, K. Tsukamoto & M. Nishida. 2001. Complete mitochondrial DNA sequence of Conger myriaster (Teleostei: Anguilliformes): novel gene order for vertebrate mitochondrial genomes and the phylogenetic implications for anguilliform families. Journal of Molecular Evolution 52: 311–320.

[JR10] Jordan, D. S., & R. E. Richardson. 1910. Check-list of the species of fishes known from the Philippine archipelago. Bureau of Printing: Manila.

[M58] Munro, I. S. R. 1958. The fishes of the New Guinea region: a check-list of the fishes of New Guinea incorporating records of species collected by the Fisheries Survey Vessel “Fairwind” during the years 1948 to 1950. Papua and New Guinea Agricultural Journal 10 (4): 97–369 (reprinted 1958. Territory of Papua and New Guinea Fisheries Bulletin no. 1).

[O87] Okamura, C. 1987. New facts: Homo and all Vertebrata were born simultaneously in the former Paleozoic in Japan. Original Report of the Okamura Fossil Laboratory 15: 347–573.

[P93] Patterson, C. 1993. Osteichthyes: Teleostei. In: Benton, M. J. (ed.) The Fossil Record 2 pp. 621–656. Chapman & Hall: London.

[SE08] Sevcsik, A., & T. Erös. 2008. A revised catalogue of freshwater fishes of Hungary and the neighbouring countries in the Hungarian Natural History Museum (Pisces). Annales Historico-Naturales Musei Nationalis Hungarici 100: 331–383.

[S99a] Smith, D. G. 1999a. Anguillidae. Freshwater eels. In: Carpenter, K. E., & V. H. Niem (eds) The Living Marine Resources of the Western Central Pacific vol. 3. Batoid fishes, chimaeras and bony fishes part 1 (Elopidae to Linophrynidae) pp. 1630–1636. FAO: Rome.

[S99b] Smith, D. G. 1999b. Moringuidae. Spaghetti eels. In: Carpenter, K. E., & V. H. Niem (eds) The Living Marine Resources of the Western Central Pacific vol. 3. Batoid fishes, chimaeras and bony fishes part 1 (Elopidae to Linophrynidae) pp. 1637–1638. FAO: Rome.

[ST02] Smith, D. G., & K. A. Tighe. 2002. Feshwater eels. Family Anguillidae. In: Collette, B. B., & G. Klein-MacPhee (eds) Bigelow and Schroeder’s Fishes of the Gulf of Maine 3^rd ed. pp. 92–95. Smithsonian Institute Press: Washington.

[S62] Smith, J. L. B. 1962. Sand-dwelling eels of the western Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Ichthyological Bulletin 24: 447–466.

[TP86] Thinès, G., & G. Proudlove. 1986. Pisces. In: Botosaneanu, L. (ed.) Stygofauna Mundi: A Faunistic, Distributional, and Ecological Synthesis of the World Fauna inhabiting Subterranean Waters (including the Marine Interstitial) pp. 709–733. E. J. Brill/Dr W. Backhuys: Leiden.

[WH02] Worthy, T. H., & R. N. Holdaway. 2002. The Lost World of the Moa: Prehistoric life of New Zealand. Indiana University Press: Bloomington (Indiana).

Last updated: 9 February 2022.