Gadidae

The Gadidae are a family of marine fish, included in the order Gadiformes, known as the cods, codfishes or true cods.[2] It contains several commercially important fishes, including the cod, haddock, whiting, and pollock.

Most gadid species are found in temperate waters of the Northern Hemisphere, but several range into subtropical, Subarctic and Arctic oceans, and a single (southern blue whiting) is found in the Southern Hemisphere. They are generally medium-sized fish, and are distinguished by the presence of three dorsal fins on the back and two anal fins on the underside. Most species have barbels on their chins, which they use while browsing on the sea floor. Gadids are carnivorous, feeding on smaller fish and crustaceans.[1]

Gadids are highly prolific, producing several million eggs at each spawning. This contributes to their high population numbers, which, in turn, makes commercial fishing relatively easy.[3]

Concepts differ about the contents of the family Gadidae. The system followed by FishBase includes a dozen genera.[1] Alternatively, also fishes in the current Lotidae (with burbot, cusk) and Phycidae (hakes) have been included in Gadidae, as its subfamilies Lotinae and Phycidae.[4][2]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2008). "Gadidae" in FishBase. December 2008 version.
  2. 1 2 "Gadidae". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved June 2012.
  3. ↑ Cohen, Daniel M. (1998). Paxton, J. R. & Eschmeyer, W. N., ed. Encyclopedia of Fishes. San Diego: Academic Press. pp. 130–131. ISBN 0-12-547665-5.
  4. ↑ Nelson, J. S. 2006. Fishes of the World, 4th edition. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, November 18, 2015. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.