Megalocottus

Megalocottus is a small genus of marine ray-finned fishes belonging to the family Cottidae, the typical sculpins. These fishes are found in the western Pacific Ocean.

Megalocottus
Megalocottus platycephalus
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Scorpaeniformes
Family: Cottidae
Subfamily: Cottinae
Genus: Megalocottus
T. N. Gill, 1861
Type species
Cottus platycephalus
Pallas, 1814[1]
Species

See text.

Taxonomy

Megalocottus was first proposed as a monospecific genus in 1861 by the American biologist Theodore Gill with Cottus paltycephalus which had been described in 1814 by Peter Simon Pallas from Kamchatka and the Sea of Okhotsk as its only species.[1][2] The 5th edition of Fishes of the World classifies this genus in the subfamily Cottinae of the family Cottidae[3] but other authorities classify it in the subfamily Myoxocephalinae of the family Psychrolutidae,[1] although others place the subfamily Myoxocephalinae within the Cottidae.[4]

Etymology

Megalocottus prefixes megalo meaning "great" or large" with Cottus, presumed to be a reference to the large size of the type species.[5]

Species

Megalocottus currently contains two recognized:[6]

Fishbase retains these two species as valid, other authorities treat the Southern flathead sculpin as a subspecies of the belligerent sculpin while others treat it as a M. taeniopterus as a junior synonym of M. platycephalus. This taxon is a sister taxon to the genus Myoxocephalus.[7]

In 2020 workers undertook a comparison of the Mitochondrial DNA of the fourhorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus quadricornis) and the belligerent sculpin and found that the fourhorn sculpin was more closely related to the belligerent sculpin than it was to the other species in the genus Myoxocephalus, they proposed that the fourhorn sculpin be reclassified as a member of the genus Megalocottus.[8]

References
  1. Eschmeyer, William N.; Fricke, Ron & van der Laan, Richard (eds.). "Genera in the family Myoxocephalinae". Catalog of Fishes. California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  2. Eschmeyer, William N.; Fricke, Ron & van der Laan, Richard (eds.). "Species in the genus Megalocottus". Catalog of Fishes. California Academy of Sciences. Retrieved 1 February 2023.
  3. J. S. Nelson; T. C. Grande; M. V. H. Wilson (2016). Fishes of the World (5th ed.). Wiley. pp. 467–495. ISBN 978-1-118-34233-6.
  4. Olga A. Radchenko; Irina N. Moreva; Anna V. Petrovskaya (2021). "The subfamily Myoxocephalinae of cottid fishes (Cottidae): Genetic divergence and phylogenetic relationships". Journal of Fish Biology. 99: 1857–1868. doi:10.1111/jfb.14886.
  5. Christopher Scharpf & Kenneth J. Lazara, eds. (22 October 2022). "Order Perciformes: Suborder Cottoidea: Infraorder Cottales: Family Cottidae (Sculpins)". The ETYFish Project Fish Name Etymology Database. Christopher Scharpf and Kenneth J. Lazara. Retrieved 2 February 2023.
  6. Froese, Rainer and Pauly, Daniel, eds. (2022). Species of Megalocottus in FishBase. August 2022 version.
  7. Mecklenburg, C.W.; T.A. Mecklenburg; B.A. Sheiko; and D. Steinke (2016). Pacific Arctic Marine Fishes. Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna, Akureyri, Iceland. pp. 72–73. ISBN 978-9935-431-55-4.
  8. Balakirev, Evgeniy; Kravchenko, Alexandra; and Semenchenko, Alexander (2020). "Genetic Evidence for a Mixed Composition of the Genus Myoxocephalus (Cottoidei: Cottidae) Necessitates Generic Realignment". Genes. 11. doi:10.3390/genes11091071. PMC 7564937.
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