Anguilliformes
Sign in to saveEels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 20 families, 164 genera, and about 1000 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage and are usually predators.
AI overview
Anguilliformes is an order of ray-finned fish that includes eels, encompassing eight suborders, 20 families, 164 genera, and about 1,000 species. These fish are notable for their significant development from larvae to adults and typically hunt other animals as predators.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Wikidata facts
Show 5 more facts
- P105
- order
- P1343
Article
17 sectionsContents
- Description
- Life cycle
- Classification
- Taxonomy
- Extant taxa
- Phylogeny
- Extinct taxa
- Commercial species
- Use by humans
- Sustainable consumption
- Etymology
- Timeline of genera
- In culture
- See also
- References
- Further references
- External links
Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 20 families, 164 genera, and about 1000 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the early larval stage to the eventual adult stage and are usually predators.
The term "eel" is also used for some other eel-shaped fish, such as electric eels (genus Electrophorus), swamp eels (order Synbranchiformes), slime eels (class Myxini), and deep-sea spiny eels (family Notacanthidae). However, these other clades, with the exception of deep-sea spiny eels, whose order Notacanthiformes is the sister clade to true eels, evolved their eel-like shapes independently from the true eels. As a main rule, most eels are marine. Exceptions are the catadromous genus Anguilla and the freshwater moray, which spend most of their life in freshwater, the anadromous rice-paddy eel, which spawns in freshwater, and the freshwater snake eel Stictorhinus.