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pd. 5/6
Bony Fish
Class Osteichthyes

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Characteristics
Bony fish range from .04 inches to 25 feet in size. Their body shape is usually a cylindrical shape and tapering at both ends. Most of the fish have pigmentation and they all have fins.  Most have scales which protect them as well as a layer of mucus.
Habitat
Bony fish live in fresh water, sea water, and brackish (a combination of fresh water and salt water) environments.
Behavior
They an either be a herbivore(plant-eaters), carnivore(meat-eaters), omnivore(plant- and meat-eaters), or detritivores(eat decomposing plants and animals). The majority of bony fish are herbivores and their diet mainly consists of algae.
*Account for about 96% of all fish species*

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Cichia ocellaris

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygil
Order: Perciformes
Family: Cichildae
Genus: Cichia
Species: C. ocellaris

Characteristics
They range in size from 1 inch to 3 feet. They are gold with three black vertical bars that fade as the fish gets older.  They also have a back spot with a golden/yellow halo on the caudal fin.
Habitat
In order for them to be successful, they must live in warm water with a slow flow and shallow waters. The water in which they are found are ponds, lakes, deep rock pits, and lateral canals. They are usually found i shaded areas.
Behavior
They typically spawn from April through September.  The female lays between 4,000 and 10,000 and both the male and female protect and guard them for several months.
They mostly eat fish during daylight hours.  They use their speed to capture their prey.
*They have reduced the number of undesirable exotic fish (spotted tilapia)*

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Fahaka pufferfish

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinopterygii
Order: Tetraodontiformes
Family: Tetraudontidae
Genus: Tetraodon
Species: T. lineatus

Characteristics
A plump and long fish covered with short prickles.  They have bright red/orange eyes and its back is a grey/brown color.  Their color gradually become lighter as you move towards the under parts, ending with their stomach being white. They have a series of light, often golden colored, horizontal stripes running from the pectoral fins back across the tail.  The coloring depends on their environment, age, disposition, and mood.  They can grow to be up to 18 inches.
Habitat
They are found in the Nile, Chad basin, Niger, Volta, Gambia, Geba and Senegal Rivers in Africa. They inhabit large rivers and open water, as well as weed beds and vegetated areas. In its natural habitat they usually breed in water 50 feet deep. This makes it difficult to breed in captivity, but breeding has been successfully documented.
Behavior
They have the ability to "puff" themselves up with water or air when they feel threatened. When they do this, their short prickles/spines move outward and this keeps them from being eaten or harmed by predators. They can also release toxic substances from their flesh that is poisonous if eaten.
In the wild, they are considered a molluscivore, which means they mainly eat benthic organisms like oysters, cockles, krill, and mussels.
To reproduce/breed, the male puffer will swim upside down under the female and will grip the female so that both sexual organs connect.  During this, the eggs and sperm are released several times, fertilizing thousands of eggs. The eggs will hatch in 3 to 4 days.

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Striated frogfish

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Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Actinoptreygii
Order: Lophiiformes
Family: Antennariidae
Genus: Striated
Species: S. frogfish

Characteristics
Frogfish are small, short, and plump. Sometimes they are covered in spinules and other parts to protect themselves/camouflage. May can change colors based on their environment and move slowly to watch their prey without being seen and then striking extremely rapidly.
Habitat
Frogfish are found in almost all tropical oceans, subtropical oceans, and seas around the world. The primary exception being the Mediterranean Sea.

Behavior
Most species are free-spawning. Females lay the eggs in the water and males come in behind to fertilize them. Eight hours to several days before the egg-laying, the abdomen of the female begins to swell up and have almost 180,000 egg absorb water. The male begins to approach the female around two days before the spawning. Whether the spawn is predetermined by some external factor, such as the phase of the moon, or if the male is attracted to a smell or signal the female releases, is unknown. It has been observed many times that one partner was noticeably larger than the other. The larger one was always the female.

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Sparalepis tingi

This fossil was found in Asia.  It supports the idea that this part of Asia may have been where an early bloom of of diversification of bony fish,  long before the Devonian “Age of Fishes.”
Silurian Period: 443.7–419.2 million years ago

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Acipenser cf. A. oxyrhynchus
Sturgeon
Sturgeon are covered in bony scutes rather than scales. Scutes and scute fragments are relatively common in Yorktown tailings at the PCS mine.  This shows the change/difference between scales and bony scutes.
Scute- a thickened horny or bony plate
Paleozoic: 2.5-5 million years old

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Chilomycterus sp. Porcupinefish
Porcupinefish mouthplate

The mouthplates of bony fish and how the upper and lower jaw has evolved overtime.

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Sparalepis
This fossil helped scientists definitively identify isolated elements from the Devonian Xitun Formation in Yunnan, attributing them to the enigmantic taxon Psarolepis.

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Merluccius sp.
Hake
This fossil is a jaw section of a Hake. It shows how their teeth have changed overtime. For example, the way the teeth are embedded in the jaws.

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This shows all of the Osteichthyes and when they started to live.

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Karyotype of a Cichia ocellaris (Butterfly Peacock Bass)

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Karyotype of a Cichia ocellaris (Butterfly Peacock Bass)

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A

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The Butterfly Peacock Bass has 24 pairs while the Astyanax Laticeps have 25 pairs. The similarity is that they both have 2 pairs of sex chromosomes.

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Comparative Chromosome Studies of the Family Osteichthyes

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Comparative Chromosome Studies of the Family Osteichthyes

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There is extensive variation in the karyotypes of bony fishes.  The smallest amount of chromosomes found in a bony fish is 3 and the largest is 76. The average amount of chromosomes found in bony fish is between 24-27.

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Sequences of 20 nuclear genes and 1 mitochondrial gene were found in over 60 species selected to be broadly representative of the Osteichthyes class.

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The anatomy and physiology throughout the Osteichthyes class are very similar.  All of their skeletons are made of bone and cartilage.  All of their fin muscles consists of a series of muscle blocks called myotomes and usually their jaw muscles consist of adductor muscles (close and open the jaw).
Their brain is divided into three sections: the forebrain (responsible for the fish' ability to smell), the midbrain (processes vision, learning, and motor responses), and the hindbrain (coordinates movement, muscle tone, and balance).  The spinal chord and a matrix of nerves take care of the rest of the body and its functions.

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The speciation of Osteichthyes is gradual. This means that the species grows slowly overtime and in small steps. It also means a new species diverges rapidly out of the parent species.

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The Osteichthyes class is divergent, meaning the differences between groups can lead to a form of new species. This happens usually because of diffusion of the same species to different and isolated environments.

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Most bony fish breed seasonally. However, the length of the reproduction period depends on the species and their environment. The average amount of time a reproduction period lasts within the Osteichthyes class is 4 months. This is a form of random mating.

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The type of isolation bony fish have is reproductive. This means that even though different species of fish live within the same environment, they can't interbreed with every other species.

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Darwin's theory of natural selection is a theory that more individuals are produced each generation that can survive. Meaning that phenotype variation exists among organisms and the organisms with the heritable traits are better suited to their environment, which means they will survive longer than species who do not.  This theory relates t my species because as bony fish have evolved, they have become more and more fit for their environment.  They have started living longer and gaining new characteristics to protect themselves, such as spinules and the ability to camouflage.

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http://myfwc.com/wildlifehabitats/profiles/freshwater/nonnatives/butterfly-peacock/

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https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwio5aD_uZvUAhVG6CYKHTrFBPAQjRwIBw&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Ffigure%2F237495855_fig1_Fig-1-Astyanax-laticeps-from-the-laguna-dos-Patos-system-a-specimen-with-670-mm&psig=AFQjCNFhx6d5L-asbOsRBXGvRTHC4AWHUQ&ust=1496365493226572

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/8029976_fig1_Figure-2-Karyotype-and-nucleolar-chromosomes-NOR-of-A-Cichla-monoculus-NOR-on-the

http://bio.sunyorange.edu/updated2/GENETICS/9%20CHROMOSOMES.htm

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http://www.fao.org/docrep/V7180E/V7180E06.gif

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https://www.ndsu.edu/pubweb/~mcclean/plsc431/popgen/popgen5.htm