Joseph S. Nelson’s scientific contributions

The authors' website is here: https://sites.google.com/view/fishes-of-the-world-5/welcome

The phylum Chordata has been used by most modern workers to encompass members of the subphyla Urochordata, including tunicates or sea-squirts, Cephalochordata, including lancelets, and Craniata, including fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. This chapter discusses the superclass of Myxinomorphi, Petromyzontomorphi and Pteraspidomorphi, infraphylum vertebrata, and subclass Astraspida. The infraphylum vertebrata monophyletic group contains members possessing or inferred to be derived from ancestors with features such as a dermal skeleton and embryonic neural crest. The chapter also describes the subclasses of Astraspida, Arandaspida, and Heterostraci. It includes a fourth, fossil-only subphylum Conodontophorida, or conodonts. Conodonts were diminutive, eel-like animals with a dental apparatus of many distinctively shaped, phosphatic, tooth-like structures arranged in an intricate pattern of paired and unpaired elements. Among extant taxa, the Cephalochordata and Craniata form a monophyletic group according to most authors, but some place Urochordata closest to Craniata.

Please visit the authors' website for this book: https://sites.google.com/view/fishes-of-the-world-5/welcome. Fishes of the World, Fifth Edition is the only modern, phylogenetically based classification of the world’s fishes. The updated text offers new phylogenetic diagrams that clarify the relationships among fish groups, as well as cutting-edge global knowledge that brings this classic reference up to date. With this resource, you can classify orders, families, and genera of fishes, understand the connections among fish groups, organize fishes in their evolutionary context, and imagine new areas of research. To further assist your work, this text provides representative drawings, many of them new, for most families of fishes, allowing you to make visual connections to the information as you read. It also contains many references to the classical as well as the most up-to-date literature on fish relationships, based on both morphology and molecular biology. The study of fishes is one that certainly requires dedication—and access to reliable, accurate information. With more than 30,000 known species of sharks, rays, and bony fishes, both lobe-finned and ray-finned, you will need to master your area of study with the assistance of the best reference materials available. This text will help you bring your knowledge of fishes to the next level. - Explore the anatomical characteristics, distribution, common and scientific names, and phylogenetic relationships of fishes - Access biological and anatomical information on more than 515 families of living fishes - Better appreciate the complexities and controversies behind the modern view of fish relationships - Refer to an extensive bibliography, which points you in the direction of additional, valuable, and up-to-date information, much of it published within the last few years. 711 pages, Index, Bibliography