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 southe ...

. 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 conflic ...

: Astronotini, Chaetobranchini,

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,

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 ...

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 ...

, and Retroculini. 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 t ...

to the clade consisting of the Heroini plus the Cichlatsomatini, these latter two being referred to as the subfamily Cichlasomatinae 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: * Cichlini * Retroculini * Astronotini * Chaetobranchini *

References

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

Tribes

See also

References