Order

Characiformes

  Class

Actinopterygii

No. in FishBase

Genera : 8 | Species : 105 Eschmeyer's Catalog of Fishes

  Environment

Fresh : Yes | Brackish : No | Marine : No

  Division

Primary freshwater

  Aquarium

some

  First Fossil Record

     

  Remark

Distribution: Southern Central America and South America. Large sac-like muscular epibranchial organ that extends dorsal to the medial elements of the dorsal portions of the gill arches; reduction or loss of dentition on the fifth upper pharyngeal tooth plate and loss on the ceratobranchial. Generally detritivorous. Maximum length 45 cm. Suggested new common name for this family from Ref. 58418. CLOFFSCA Distinguished from all other Characiformes by the combination of the total absence in adults of dentition in either jaw (a feature present elsewhere among characiforms only in Anodus of the family Hemiodontidae) and a series of internal synapomorphies in multiple body systems (see Vari (1989: 52) for a summary). The species of the Curimatidae are broadly distributed across southern Central America and much of tropical and subtemperate South America. Members of the family occur in the Trans-Andean Pacific Ocean drainages from southwestern Costa Rica (Bussing, 1988: 127) to northwestern Peru (Vari, 1989: 17). Curimatids inhabit the Trans-Andean Carribean versant drainages from the Atrato River of northwestern Colombia (Vari, 1991:38) to the western drainages of the Lago Maracaibo basin in northwestern Venezuela (Vari, 1984: 25). East of the Andean Cordilleras, curimatids occupy most river basins from the Río Orinoco system to slightly south of Buenos Aires, Argentina, being most speciose in the Amazon and Orinoco basins, with less diverse assemblages of species inhabiting the coastal rivers of the Guianas, the rio Sno Francisco basin, and various of the shorter rivers from northeastern Brazil to Uruguay (Vari, 1989). Externally the fishes of this family range from fusiform to deep bodied, slab-sided fishes (Vari, 1989: figs. 1-2), but with most species of intermediate body form. Internally these fishes demonstrate numerous modifications of various body systems, most notably the gill arches (Vari, 1989). Members of the family demonstrate a nearly ten fold range in standard lengths, with the largest know adult males of Curimatopsis evelynae achieving approximately 3.3 cm SL (Vari, 1982:26) and the largest reported specimens of Curimata mivartii being over 32.0 cm SL (Dahl, 1971: 105). Many species travel in large schools (Mendez dos Santos, 1984: 28-29) that often constitute a major portion of the fish biomass in both riverine and lacustrine habitats. They have a number of modifications of the mouth, gill-arches, and digestive tract which allow them to efficiently utilize the flocculent organic mater, microdetritus, microvegetation, and filamentous algae that are common in those habitats across the Neotropics (Carvalho, 1984: Nomura and Hayashi, 1980; Nomura and Taveira, 1979). Some members of the family are known to engage in mass spawning migrations (Godoy, 1975: 581). The questions of the relationships of the Curimatidae to other characiforms and of the generic-level intrarelationships within the family were dealt with by Vari (1983, 1989). The species level taxonomy, phylogeny, and biogeography of the Curimatidae has been examined in a series of revisionary studies (Curimata (Vari, 1989; Vari and Reis, 1995); Curimatella (Vari, 1992); Curimatopsis (Vari, 1982, 1982); Cyphocharax (Vari, 1992; Vari and Blackledge, 1996) Potamorhina (Vari, 1984); Psectrogaster (Vari, 1989); Pseudocurimata (Vari, 1989); and Steindachnerina (Vari, 1991, 1993; Vari and Williams Vari, 1989). These publications placed a number of species into synonymy, but also resulted in the description of numerous species new to science. Several as of yet undescribed species are known to researchers and it is expected that additional species await discovery. In the course of their annual mass migrations various species of this family are exploited in commercial and subsistence fisheries from Colombia (Dahl, 1971: 105) through Venezuela (Mago-Leccia, 1970: 31) into the Amazon (Goulding, 1981:60) and elsewhere in South America (Lowe-McConnell, 1975). These fishes are also important as food items for large, commercially important, predatory fish species.

  Etymology

A locality in Brasil, in Piauí State and local name for a fish; it also exist "curimbatá" and "curimba"

  Reproductive guild

nonguarders

  Typical activity level

normal

  Main Ref

Nelson, J.S. 1994

  Coordinator

Nelson, J.S. 1994

  Deep Fin Classification

Osteichthyes | Actinopterygii | Actinopteri | Neopterygii | Teleostei | Osteoglossocephalai | Clupeocephala | Otomorpha | Ostariophysi | Otophysa | Characiphysae | Characiformes | Characoidei | Curimatidae