Dragonets in Change

If you are an experienced underwater photographer, the mandarin fish is probably either on your list of fishes to photograph, or shots of that fish are among your most proud moments. The mandarin fish belongs to the dragonets, the scientific name of the fishes is Callionymidae. More about the interesting taxonomy (the science of relatedness between organisms) later. But let’s first check out two dragonets fighting:

I always love observing and filming animal behavior. What a fierce encounter between two tiny fish!

Now let’s look at the way dragonets are related to other small bony fishes. They are in the family of the Callionymidae – Dragonets, as you can see on the below screenshot from Fishbase. Fishbase lists 196 species of dragonets. I learned many years ago that the dragonets belong to the order of the Perciformes, the bas-like fishes. This used to be a bit of a “one box for all we are not sure about” order for fish taxonomy, including the actual basses but also a great variety of other fishes, such as the dragonets.

Fish taxonomists now seem to be re-arranging the system of relationships on the level of orders. The dragonets are now listed on Fishbase as belonging to the Callionymiformes, an order which they only share with the Draconettidae, the slope dragonets, a small family of marine fishes which basically look like very elongated dragonets. I have never seen a slope dragonet, but would like to of course.

I have seen some excellent new studies on the classification of bony fishes, but I really haven’t seen a “master plan” to de-clutter the order Perciformes. If I have missed that, please let me know. One could think that it’s of limited interest to a diver, which order the mandarin fish is is in … but I do like to have a phylogenetic tree (the branching pattern of how animals diverged in evolution) in front of my eyes when I look at fish during a dive. Are the dragonets closer to gobies, or to pipefishes (as is stated in above publication)? It does make a difference for me in how I think about these curious fishes.

More Video

This is an overview video I made about the family of the dragonets. This was before I read about the news regarding their position among the fishes, hence the comment with relatedness to gobies…

 

They Live on Flickr Too

Here is an album of all of my shots of dragonets from a decade and a half of underwater photography. These are some really excellent and unusual shots in my humble opinion!

Best Fishes,

Klaus