Macquaria Explained

Macquaria is a genus of medium-sized, predatory temperate perches endemic to Australia. They are found in rivers and estuaries of the eastern part of the continent.

Species

The currently recognized species in this genus are:

• Macquaria ambigua (J. Richardson, 1845), commonly known as golden perch or "yellowbelly"
• Macquaria australasica (G. Cuvier, 1830), commonly known as Macquarie perch
• Macquaria colonorum (Günther, 1863), commonly known as estuary perch
• Macquaria novemaculeata (Steindachner, 1866), commonly known as Australian bass

Taxonomy

Some workers have found that the genus Macquaria is polyphyletic and that the two catadromous species Macquaria colonorum and M. novemaculeata are not the closest relatives of the other two species in the genus and are placed in the genus Percalates in the monotypic family Percalatidae These authors also found that the Percichthyidae and the Percalatidae were part of one of three cladea within a new order, the Centrarchiformes in the Percomorpha.^[1]

Notes and References

1. Sébastien Lavoué . Kouji Nakayama . Dean R. Jerry. Yusuke Yamanoue. Naoki Yagishita . Nobuaki Suzuki . Mutsumi Nishida . Masaki Miya . 3 . 2014 . Mitogenomic phylogeny of the Percichthyidae and Centrarchiformes (Percomorphaceae): comparison with recent nuclear gene-based studies and simultaneous analysis . 10.1016/j.gene.2014.07.033 . Gene . 549 . 1 . 46–57. 25026502 . Abstract