INTRODUCTION: Welcome to The Neotropical Sciaenidae web page. This page provides information, photographs, references, and links to New World sciaenids. Sciaenids are a family of commercially important fishes commonly known as drums and croakers (Teleostei: Perciformes). They are highly diverse both ecologically and morphologically, and are among the most common fishes in tropical and subtropical marine and brackish waters of the Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans. They have also secondarily invaded fresh water in North and South America (Chao, 1978). There are about 270 species in 70 genera in the family (Nelson, 2006).
I first encountered sciaenids as an undergrad in Ecuador (Aguirre, 1995) and quickly became fascinated with their diversity. For my Masters at the Gulf Coast Research Lab, I worked with the sciaenid genus Cynoscion. My research involved studying differences in otolith morphology among species in the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic coast of North America and in Ecuador (Aguirre, 2000; 2003). I also became interested in the phylogenetic relationships (Vergara et al., In Prep.) and morphological diversification (Aguirre and Shervette, 2005) of the group. Although I haven't seriously worked with sciaenids in a while, I maintain an interest in them. Hence this page. Please note that some of the information presented (like the bibliography) has not been updated in years. Still, I hope you find this page useful.
Literature Cited:
Aguirre, W.E. 1995. Ictiofauna acompaņante al cultivo del camaron en piscinas del Estero Chupadores en el sur del Archipielago de Jambeli (Icthyofauna bycatch from shrimp culture ponds of the Chupadores Bayou, southern Jambeli Archipielago). Unpublished thesis. University of Guayaquil, Faculty of Natural Sciences, Guayaquil, Ecuador, 30 pp.
Aguirre, W.E. 2000. Phylogenetic vs. ecophenotypic influences on interspecific variability of sagittae in the genera Cynoscion and Isopisthus (Teleostei: Sciaenidae). M.S. Thesis. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Southern Mississippi. Hattiesburg, MS, USA, 144 pp.
Aguirre, W.E. 2003. Allometric growth of the sulcus in Cynoscion (Sciaenidae). Journal of Fish Biology 63:1341-1346.
Aguirre, W.E., and V.R. Shervette. 2005. Morphological diversity of the Cynoscion group (Perciformes: Sciaenidae) in the Gulf of Guayaquil, Ecuador (Perciformes: Sciaenidae), a comparative approach. Environmental Biology of Fishes 73:403-413.
Chao, L.N. 1978. A basis for classifying western Atlantic Sciaenidae (Teleostei: Perciformes). NOAA Technical Report Circular- 415.
Nelson, J.S. 2006. Fishes of the world. John Wiley and Sons, Hoboken, NJ.
Vergara Chen, C. W.E. Aguirre, and E. Bermingham. In Prep. Molecular systematics of the genus Cynoscion (Pisces: Sciaenidae) inferred from Mitochondrial DNA.
