Cypriniformes is an

order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood * Heterarchy, a system of organization wherein the elements have the potential to be ranked a number of d ...

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fishes, is a class of bony fish. They comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. The ray-finned fishes are so called because their fins are webs of skin supported by bony or h ...

, including the

carp Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...

minnow Minnow is the common name for a number of species of small freshwater fish, belonging to several genera of the families Cyprinidae and Leuciscidae. They are also known in Ireland as pinkeens. Smaller fish in the subfamily Leusciscidae are ...

s, loaches, and relatives. Cypriniformes is an Order within the Superorder Ostariophysi consisting of "

Carp Carp are various species of oily freshwater fish from the family Cyprinidae, a very large group of fish native to Europe and Asia. While carp is consumed in many parts of the world, they are generally considered an invasive species in parts of ...

-like" Ostariophysins. This order contains 11-12 families, although some authorities have designated as many as 23, over 400

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 ...

, and more than 4,250 species, with new species being described every few months or so, and new genera being recognized frequently.Eschmeyer, W.N., Fong, J.D. (2015
Species by family/subfamily
in the Catalog of Fishes, California Academy of Sciences (retrieved 2 July 2015) They are most diverse in southeastern

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 are entirely absent from Australia and

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 souther ...

.Nelson (2006) At 112 years old, the longest-lived cypriniform fish documented is the bigmouth buffalo. Their closest living relatives are the Characiformes ( characins and allies), the Gymnotiformes ( electric eel and American knifefishes), and the Siluriformes (catfishes).

Description

Like other orders of the Ostariophysi, fishes of Cypriniformes possess a Weberian apparatus. They differ from most of their relatives in having only a

dorsal fin A dorsal fin is a fin located on the back of most marine and freshwater vertebrates within various taxa of the animal kingdom. Many species of animals possessing dorsal fins are not particularly closely related to each other, though through c ...

on their backs; most other fishes of Ostariophysi have a small, fleshy adipose fin behind the dorsal fin. Further differences are the Cypriniformes' unique kinethmoid, a small median bone in the snout, and the lack of teeth in the mouth. Instead, they have convergent structures called pharyngeal teeth in the throat. While other groups of fish, such as cichlids, also possess pharyngeal teeth, the cypriniformes' teeth grind against a chewing pad on the base of the skull, instead of an upper pharyngeal jaw. Steinbeisser 001

The most notable family placed here is the

Cyprinidae Cyprinidae is a family of freshwater fish commonly called the carp or minnow family. It includes the carps, the true minnows, and relatives like the barbs and barbels. Cyprinidae is the largest and most diverse fish family and the largest v ...

(

s and

s), which make up two-thirds of the order's diversity. This is one of the largest families of fish, and is widely distributed across

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 ...

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelag ...

, and North America. Most species are strictly freshwater inhabitants, but a considerable number are found in brackish water, such as roach and

bream Bream ( ) are species of freshwater and marine fish belonging to a variety of genera including '' Abramis'' (e.g., ''A. brama'', the common bream), '' Acanthopagrus'', '' Argyrops'', '' Blicca'', '' Brama'', '' Chilotilapia'', ''Etelis'', ' ...

. At least one species is found in saltwater, the Pacific redfin, '' Tribolodon brandtii''. Brackish water and marine cyprinids are invariably anadromous, swimming upstream into rivers to spawn. Sometimes separated as family Psilorhynchidae, they seem to be specially adapted fishes of the Cyprinidae. The

Balitoridae The hillstream loaches or river loaches are a family, the Balitoridae, of small fish from South, Southeast and East Asia. The family includes about 202 species. They are sometimes sold as "lizardfish" or (in Germany) "flossensaugers". Many of t ...

and Gyrinocheilidae are families of mountain-stream fishes feeding on algae and small

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s. They are found only in

tropical The tropics are the regions of Earth surrounding the Equator. They are defined in latitude by the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere at N and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere at S. The tropics are also referred to ...

and subtropical

. While the former are a speciose group, the latter contain only a handful of

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

. The suckers ( Catostomidae) are found in

temperate In geography, the temperate climates of Earth occur in the middle latitudes (23.5° to 66.5° N/S of Equator), which span between the tropics and the polar regions of Earth. These zones generally have wider temperature ranges throughout t ...

North America and eastern Asia. These large fishes are similar to carps in appearance and ecology. Members of the Cobitidae are common across

and parts of

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

. A midsized group like the suckers, they are rather similar to catfish in appearance and behaviour, feeding primarily off the substrate and equipped with barbels to help them locate food at night or in murky conditions. Fishes in the families Cobitidae, Balitoridae, Botiidae, and Gyrinocheilidae are called loaches, although the last do not seem to belong to the lineage of "true" loaches, but are related to the suckers.He ''et al.'' (2008)

Systematics

Historically, these included all the forms now placed in the superorder Ostariophysi except the catfish, which were placed in the order Siluriformes. By this definition, the Cypriniformes 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 ...

, so recently, the orders Gonorhynchiformes, Characiformes, ( characins and allies), and Gymnotiformes ( knifefishes and electric eels) have been separated out to form their own

monophyletic 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 ...

orders. The families of Cypriniformes are traditionally divided into two suborders. Superfamily Cyprinioidea contains the carps and minnows (

) and also the mountain carps as the family Psilorhynchidae. In 2012,

Maurice Kottelat Maurice Kottelat (born 16 July 1957 in Delémont, Switzerland