zander

The zander (Sander lucioperca), sander or pikeperch, is a species of ray-finned fish from the family Percidae (which also includes perch, ruffe and darter). It is found in freshwater and brackish habitats in western Eurasia. As a popular game fish, it has been introduced to a variety of localities outside its native range. It is the type species of the genus Sander.

==Taxonomy== The zander was first formally described in 1758 as Perca lucioperca by Carolus Linnaeus in volume 1 of the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, and he gave the type locality as "European lakes". When Lorenz Oken (1779–1851) created the genus Sander, he made Perca lucioperca its type species. The zander is part of the European clade within the genus Sander, which split from a common ancestor with the North American clade, which the walleye (S. vitreus) and the sauger (S. canadensis) belong to, around 20.8 million years ago. Within the European clade the Volga pikeperch (S. volgaensis) is the most basal taxon and shares features with the North American clade, such as being a broadcast spawner. In contrast in the zander and the estuarine perch (S. marinus), the males build nests, the females spawn into these nests, and the males then guard the eggs and fry. The lineage leading to the zander is thought to have diverged from the common ancestor with the Volga pikeperch circa 13.8 million years ago, while the split from the estuarine perch took place around 9.1 million years ago.