The Claroteidae are a

family Family (from la, familia) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its ...

catfish Catfish (or catfishes; order Siluriformes or Nematognathi) are a diverse group of ray-finned fish. Named for their prominent barbels, which resemble a cat's whiskers, catfish range in size and behavior from the three largest species alive, ...

(order Siluriformes) 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 ...

. This family was separated from Bagridae. However, the

monophyly In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic grou ...

of the family is sometimes contested. The 12

genera Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclat ...

contain 86 known species of claroteids in two subfamilies, Claroteinae and Auchenoglanidinae. The subfamily Auchenoglanidinae is sometimes classified as a separate family Auchenoglanididae. This group was also often formerly placed in Bagridae. The monophyly of Auchenoglanidinae is uncontested; it contains the three genera '' Auchenoglanis'', ''

Parauchenoglanis ''Parauchenoglanis'' is a genus of claroteid catfishes native to Africa. The range of the genus ''Parauchenoglanis'' stretches from the coastal lowlands of Benin and Nigeria to the Okavango and upper Zambezi River systems in Botswana and Zambia ...

'' and '' Notoglanidium''. Two commonly known species are the giraffe catfish, ''Auchenoglanis occidentalis'', and the African big-eye catfish, ''

Chrysichthys ''Chrysichthys'' is a genus of claroteid catfishes native to Africa. Two fossil species are known. ''Chrysichthys macrotis'', Van Neer, 1994, is known from the Miocene-Pliocene of the Albertine Rift in Uganda and ''Chrysichthys mahengeensis'', M ...

longipinnis''. Claroteids have moderately elongated bodies, usually with four pairs of barbels, an adipose fin, and strong pectoral and dorsal fin spines.

References

Catfish families * Taxa named by Pieter Bleeker {{catfish-stub