The Cichlinae are a subfamily of fishes in the cichlid family, native to

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sou ...

. This subfamily consists of approximately 117 described species as of July 2017. Some authors have suggested that the Cichlinae encompasses all of the Neotropical Cichlids and found the taxon to be monphyletic and to be divided into seven

tribes The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confli ...

Astronotini ''Astronotus'' is a genus of South American fish from the family Cichlidae. There are two commonly recognized species in the genus (listed below), though genetic evidence suggests that additional species exist; several of these possibly distinct ...

Chaetobranchini Chaetobranchini is a tribe of the subfamily Cichlinae, the American cichlids. They are distributed from the river basin of the Orinoco and the Guianas south to the basins of the Río Paraná and Río Paraguay . The two recognised genera of the Ch ...

Cichlasomatini Cichlastomatini is a tribe of cichlids from South America, one of two tribes that make up the subfamily Cichlasomatinae. They were recognised in 1983 as an assemblage by the Swedish ichthyologist Sven O. Kullander by their four rather than five ...

Cichlini Peacock bass or Brazilian tucunaré are large freshwater cichlids of the genus ''Cichla''. These are diurnal predatory fishes native to the Amazon and Orinoco basins, as well as rivers of the Guianas, in tropical South America. They are somet ...

Geophagini Geophagini is a tribe of cichlids from the subfamily Cichlinae, the American cichlids. It is the sister taxon to the clade which includes the Cichlasomatini and Heroini. Fishes in the Geophagini are distributed from Panama south to Argentina, i ...

Heroini Heroini is a fish tribe from the Cichlasomatinae subfamily in the cichlid family. All cichlids native to the Greater Antilles, United States (southern Texas), Mexico and northern Central America are members of this tribe. It also includes most ci ...

, and

Retroculini ''Retroculus'' is a genus of cichlids native to tropical South America, where three are native to rivers in southeastern Amazon Basin in Brazil, while the final is native to rivers in Amapá (Brazil) and French Guiana. It is the sole genus incl ...

. In this system the Geophaginae plus the Chaetobranchini were recovered as the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to the clade consisting of the Heroini plus the Cichlatsomatini, these latter two being referred to as the subfamily

Cichlasomatinae The Cichlasomatinae are a subfamily of cichlid fishes, including all ciclids native to the Greater Antilles ( Cuba and Hispaniola), United States (southern Texas), Mexico and Central America, and many of the cichlids from South America (the othe ...

in some classifications, while the

monogeneric In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

Astronotini was a sister taxon to these four, while the Cichlini and Retroculini made up a sister clade of the other five.

Tribes

The following tribes make up the subfamily Cichlinae: *

References

Fish subfamilies Cichlidae Cichlid fish of South America {{cichlid-stub

Tribes

See also

References