Belonidae

Houndfish Tylosurus crocodilus, copyright Philippe Bourjon.

Belongs within: Exocoetoidei.

The Belonidae, needlefishes, are a group of fast-swimming predatory fishes in which the jaws are prolonged to form a long, slim beak with numerous teeth (Collette 2002).

<==Belonidae
    |--Ablennes hians (Valenciennes 1846) C02 [=Belone hians M58]
    |--Eurycaulus persimilis [incl. E. dorsalis] G75
    |--Thalassosteus appendiculata (Klunzinger 1871) [=Belone appendiculata] M58
    |--Stenocaulus krefftii (Günther 1866) [=Belone krefftii, Tylosurus krefftii; incl. B. cancila Macleay 1883] M58
    |--Belone LD09
    |    |--B. ardeola CS77
    |    |--B. belone (Linnaeus 1761) LD09
    |    |--B. harmati Weiler 1933 P93
    |    `--B. menelitica Pauca 1938 P93
    |--Strongylura C02
    |    |--S. anastomella SSE10
    |    |--S. incisa (Valenciennes 1846) [=Belone incisa; incl. B. liuroides Günther 1880] M58
    |    |--S. krefftii (Günther 1866) M10 [incl. Stenocaulis perornatus Whitley 1938 AC90, M58]
    |    |--S. leiura (Bleeker 1850) [=Belone leiurus] M58
    |    |--S. marina (Walbaum 1792) [=Tylosurus marinus] C02
    |    |--S. strongylura (Van Hasselt 1823) (see below for synonymy) M58
    |    `--S. urvillii (Valenciennes 1846) [=Belone urvillii; incl. B. macrolepis Duncker & Mohr 1926] M58
    `--Tylosurus C02
         |--T. acus Lacepède 1803 C02
         |--T. caudimaculatus JR10
         |--T. crocodilus (Lesueur 1821) (see below for synonymy) M58
         |--T. giganteus JR10
         |--T. indica (Lesueur 1821) [=Belone indica; incl. B. annulata Macleay 1883, Tylosurus annulatus] M58
         |--T. leiuroides JR10
         |--T. leiurus JR10
         |--T. macleayanus G75
         |--T. melanotus (Bleeker 1850) M58 [=Belone melanotus M58, Djulongius melanotus M58, Tylosurus acus melanotus MK00]
         |--T. notatus F15
         |--T. punctulatus (Günther 1871) [=Belone punctulata] M58
         |--T. schismatorhynchus JR10
         `--T. terebra G75

Strongylura strongylura (Van Hasselt 1823) [=Belone strongylura, Mastacambelus strongylurus, Tylosurus strongylurus] M58

Tylosurus crocodilus (Lesueur 1821) [=Belone crocodila, Orphie rov Montrouzier in Thiollière 1857 (n. n.); incl. B. choram Peters 1876] 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.

[C02] Collette, B. B. 2002. Needlefishes. Family Belonidae. In: Collette, B. B., & G. Klein-MacPhee (eds) Bigelow and Schroeder’s Fishes of the Gulf of Maine 3^rd ed. pp. 287–289. Smithsonian Institute Press: Washington.

[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.

[F15] Fowler, H. W. 1915. Cold-blooded vertebrates from Florida, the West Indies, Costa Rica, and eastern Brazil. Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 67 (2): 244–269.

[G75] Grant, E. M. 1975. Guide to Fishes. The Co-ordinator-General’s Department: Brisbane (Australia).

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

[LD09] Li, B., A. Dettaï, C. Cruaud, A. Couloux, M. Desoutter-Meniger & G. Lecointre. 2009. RNF213, a new nuclear marker for acanthomorph phylogeny. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 50: 345–363.

[MK00] Machida, M., & T. Kuramochi. 2000. Digenean trematodes from halfbeaks and needlefishes of Japan and adjacent waters. Bulletin of the Natural Science Museum Series A (Zoology) 26: 203–218.

[M10] Morgan, D. L. 2010. Fishes of the King Edward River in the Kimberley region, Western Australia. Records of the Western Australian Museum 25 (4): 351–368.

[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).

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

[SSE10] Sokolovskaya, T. G., A. S. Sokolovsky & I. V. Epur. 2010. Composition and seasonal variability of ichthyoplankton collected using fishing lights in Vostok Bay (Peter the Great Bay, Sea of Japan). In: China-Russia Bilateral Symposium: Proceedings of the China-Russia Bilateral Symposium of "Comparison on Marine Biodiversity in the Northwest Pacific Ocean", 10–11 October 2010, Qingdao (China) pp. 182–186. Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; A. V. Zhirmunsky Institute of Marine Biology, Far East Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences.