Family-group names of Recent fishes.

The family-group names of animals (superfamily, family, subfamily, supertribe, tribe and subtribe) are regulated by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Family names are particularly important because they are among the most widely used of all technical animal names. Apart from using the correct family-group name according to the Code, it is also important to use one unique universal name (with a fixed spelling) to avoid confusion. We have compiled a list of family-group names for Recent fishes, applied the rules of the Code and, if possible, tried to conserve the names in prevailing recent practice. We list all of the family-group names found to date for Recent fishes (N=2625), together with their author(s) and year of publication. This list can be used in assigning the correct family-group name to a genus or a group of genera. With this publication we contribute to the usage of correct, universal family-group names in the classification of, and for communication about, Recent fishes. 

The magnitude of global marine species diversity.

BACKGROUND: The question of how many marine species exist is important because it provides a metric for how much we do and do not know about life in the oceans. We have compiled the first register of the marine species of the world and used this baseline to estimate how many more species, partitioned among all major eukaryotic groups, may be discovered. RESULTS: There are ∼226,000 eukaryotic marine species described. More species were described in the past decade (∼20,000) than in any previous one. The number of authors describing new species has been increasing at a faster rate than the number of new species described in the past six decades. We report that there are ∼170,000 synonyms, that 58,000-72,000 species are collected but not yet described, and that 482,000-741,000 more species have yet to be sampled. Molecular methods may add tens of thousands of cryptic species. Thus, there may be 0.7-1.0 million marine species. Past rates of description of new species indicate there may be 0.5 ± 0.2 million marine species. On average 37% (median 31%) of species in over 100 recent field studies around the world might be new to science. CONCLUSIONS: Currently, between one-third and two-thirds of marine species may be undescribed, and previous estimates of there being well over one million marine species appear highly unlikely. More species than ever before are being described annually by an increasing number of authors. If the current trend continues, most species will be discovered this century.