Osteichthyes General Characteristics and Examples | Free Biology Notes

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Osteichthyes General Characteristics

• Fresh water or marine
• Endoskeleton mostly bony. Expect the sturgeons.
• Skin usually covered with scales but placoid scales absent
• Gill slits covered by operculum
• Air bladder present
• Spiral valves absent in intestine
• Males without claspers, fertilization is external.
• They are oviparous

Osteichthyes Examples

Labeo rohita (rohu)

• Found in fresh water
• This fish serves as a popular delicious fish

Hippocampus (sea horse)

• The male bears brood pouch in which female lays eggs and remain there till they hatch
• Parental care is performed by male

Exocoetus (flying fish)

• The pectoral fins are modified into wing-like structures, with the help of which the fish glides.

Anguilla (fresh water eel)

• It has a long snake like body
• Adult male and female fishes migrate from river to sea where they lay eggs and die. (catadromous migration)
• The young which hatches from egg is called leptocephalus (larva of eel)
• Larvae are so transparent that they are called glass fishes
• They feed and grow in sea for 2 or 3 years, then enter the river and undergo metamorphosis to become adults

Gambusia (mosquito fish)

• It feeds on the mosquito larvae
• Widely used to control mosquito

Tenualosa (hilsa)

• It is a very popular food fish in the Indian
• Adult male and female fishes migrate from sea to river where they lay eggs and die. (anadromous migration)

Prototerous (African lung fish)

• Gills are weakly developed
• Respiration is supplemented with two lungs
• It undergoes aestivation during summer season

Latimeria (Coelacanth)

• It is a living fossill which was taken off from the eastern coast of South Africa
• It is believed that crossopterygians (fleshy finned fish) were the ancestors of the first amphibians
• It is a connecting link between fishes and amphibians.