stickleback

The sticklebacks are a family of ray-finned fishes, the Gasterosteidae which have a Holarctic distribution in fresh, brackish and marine waters. They were thought to be related to the pipefish and seahorses but are now thought to be more closely related to the eelpouts and sculpins.

==Taxonomy== The stickleback family, Gasterosteidae, was first proposed as a family by the French zoologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1831. It was long thought that the sticklebacks and their relatives comprise a suborder, the Gasterosteoidei, of the order Gasterostiformes with the sea horses and pipefishes making up the suborder Syngnathoidei. More recent phylogenetic work has shown that the Gaterosteoidei are more closely related to the Zoarcoidei and the Cottoidei, which would mean that this taxon would belong in the order Scorpaeniformes. However, in other phylogenetic classifications it is treated as the infraorder Gasterosteales within the suborder Cottoidei or as a sister clade to the Zoarcales in the order Zoarciformes.