Latidae
Encyclopedia
The Latidae are a family of perch-like fishes found in Africa
and the Indian
and Pacific
Oceans. The family, previously classified subfamily Latinae in family Centropomidae
, was raised to family status in 2004 after a cladistic analysis
showed the original Centropomidae was paraphyletic
.
Many species in this family are important food fishes and some have been introduced outside their native ranges to provide fishing stocks. The freshwater Nile perch
, a fierce predator, has become infamous, as its introduction into Lake Victoria
in the 1960s has wrought devastation on the native fishes of the lake, causing the extinction
of many.
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
and the Indian
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
and Pacific
Pacific Ocean
The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...
Oceans. The family, previously classified subfamily Latinae in family Centropomidae
Centropomidae
The Centropomidae are a single genus family of freshwater and marine fishes in Order Perciformes, including the common snook or róbalo, Centropomus undecimalis...
, was raised to family status in 2004 after a cladistic analysis
Cladistics
Cladistics is a method of classifying species of organisms into groups called clades, which consist of an ancestor organism and all its descendants . For example, birds, dinosaurs, crocodiles, and all descendants of their most recent common ancestor form a clade...
showed the original Centropomidae was paraphyletic
Paraphyly
A group of taxa is said to be paraphyletic if the group consists of all the descendants of a hypothetical closest common ancestor minus one or more monophyletic groups of descendants...
.
Many species in this family are important food fishes and some have been introduced outside their native ranges to provide fishing stocks. The freshwater Nile perch
Nile perch
The Nile perch is a species of freshwaterfish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. It is widespread throughout muchof the Afrotropic ecozone, being native to the Congo, Nile, Senegal, Niger, and Lake Chad, Volta, Lake Turkana and other river basins. It also occurs in the brackish waters of...
, a fierce predator, has become infamous, as its introduction into Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria
Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. The lake was named for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, by John Hanning Speke, the first European to discover this lake....
in the 1960s has wrought devastation on the native fishes of the lake, causing the extinction
Extinction
In biology and ecology, extinction is the end of an organism or of a group of organisms , normally a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point...
of many.