The Latidae, known as the lates perches, are a family of perch-like fish found in

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an ...

, and the Indian and western

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

s. Including about 13 species, the family, previously classified subfamily Latinae in family

Centropomidae ''Centropomus'' is a genus of predominantly marine fish comprising the family Centropomidae. The type species is '' Centropomus undecimalis'', the common snook. Commonly known as snooks or ''róbalos'', the ''Centropomus'' species are native to ...

, was raised to family status in 2004 after a

cladistic analysis Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived ch ...

showed the original Centropomidae were

paraphyletic In taxonomy (general), taxonomy, a group is paraphyletic if it consists of the group's most recent common ancestor, last common ancestor and most of its descendants, excluding a few Monophyly, monophyletic subgroups. The group is said to be pa ...

. The Latidae are characterised by having dorsal fins that are incompletely separated, or if they are separated, a few isolated spines will be found between the anterior and posterior parts of the fin. Their

caudal fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as s ...

is normally rounded. All species have a

vertebral column The vertebral column, also known as the backbone or spine, is part of the axial skeleton. The vertebral column is the defining characteristic of a vertebrate in which the notochord (a flexible rod of uniform composition) found in all chordate ...

made up of 25

vertebrae The spinal column, a defining synapomorphy shared by nearly all vertebrates, Hagfish are believed to have secondarily lost their spinal column is a moderately flexible series of vertebrae (singular vertebra), each constituting a characteristi ...

. Many species in this family are important food fishes, and some have been introduced outside their native ranges to provide fishing stocks. The freshwater

Nile perch The Nile perch (''Lates niloticus''), also known as the African snook, Goliath perch, African barramundi , Goliath barramundi, Giant lates or the Victoria perch, is a species of freshwater fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. It is w ...

, a fierce predator, has become infamous, as its introduction into

Lake Victoria Lake Victoria is one of the African Great Lakes. With a surface area of approximately , Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's largest tropical lake, and the world's second-largest fresh water lake by surface area after ...

in the 1950s has wrought devastation on the native fishes of the lake, causing the

extinction Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds ( taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed ...

of many endemic

cichlid Cichlids are fish from the family Cichlidae in the order Cichliformes. Cichlids were traditionally classed in a suborder, the Labroidei, along with the wrasses ( Labridae), in the order Perciformes, but molecular studies have contradicted th ...

s there.Pringle, R.M. (2005)
The Origins of the Nile Perch in Lake Victoria.
BioScience 55 (9): 780-787.

Genera

The Latidae contain three extant and one extinct genera: * †''

Eolates ''Eolates'' is an extinct genus of prehistoric ray-finned fish. See also * Prehistoric fish * List of prehistoric bony fish A ''list'' is any set of items in a row. List or lists may also refer to: People * List (surname) Organizations ...

'' Sorbini, 1970 * ''

Hypopterus The spikey bass (''Hypopterus macropterus'') is a species of ray-finned fish in the family Latidae, the lates perches. It is endemic to coastal waters off Western Australia, where it inhabits areas with soft substrates. It is the only species i ...

Gill A gill () is a respiratory organ that many aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow respiration on land provided they ar ...

, 1861 * ''

Lates ''Lates'' is a genus of freshwater and euryhaline lates perches belonging to the family Latidae. The generic name is also used as a common name, lates, for many of the species. All species are predatory, and the Nile perch (''L. niloticus''), i ...

Cuvier Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric, Baron Cuvier (; 23 August 1769 – 13 May 1832), known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist, sometimes referred to as the "founding father of paleontology". Cuvier was a major figure in nat ...

, 1828 * ''

Psammoperca The Waigieu seaperch (''Psammoperca waigiensis''), or Waigeo barramundi, is a species of marine fish in family Latidae of order Perciformes. The only species of genus ''Psammoperca'', it is native to tropical coastal waters from the Bay of Beng ...

Richardson Richardson may refer to: People * Richardson (surname), an English and Scottish surname * Richardson Gang, a London crime gang in the 1960s * Richardson Dilworth, Mayor of Philadelphia (1956-1962) Places Australia *Richardson, Australian Capi ...

, 1848 † denotes that this taxon is extinct

References

Marine fish families Taxa named by David Starr Jordan {{Percoidea-stub