Percomorpha Temporal range: Santonian–present PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N Possible Cenomanian record
Rose fish
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Actinopterygii
Superorder:	Acanthopterygii
Clade:	Percomorpha Cope, 1871
Subgroups
See text
Synonyms
Percomorphaceae Betancur-Rodriguez et al., 2013 Acanthopteri

Percomorpha (from Latin perca 'perch', and Ancient Greek μορφή (morphḗ) 'shape, appearance') is a large clade of ray-finned fish with more than 17 000 known species that includes the tuna, seahorses, gobies, cichlids, flatfish, wrasse, perches, anglerfish, and pufferfish.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

Evolution

Percomorpha are the most diverse group of teleost fish today. Teleosts, and percomorphs in particular, thrived during the Cenozoic era. Fossil evidence shows that there was a major increase in size and abundance of teleosts immediately after the mass extinction event at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary ca. 66 Ma ago.^[7] The oldest known percomorph fossils are of the early tetraodontiforms Protriacanthus and Cretatriacanthidae from the Santonian to Campanian of Italy and Slovenia.^[8] A higher diversity of early percomorphs is also known from the Campanian of Nardò, Italy, and these also show some level of diversification into modern orders, with representatives of the Syngnathiformes and Tetraodontiformes known.^[9] Possibly the oldest percomorph is Plectocretacicus from the Cenomanian of Lebanon, which may be a stem-tetraodontiform; however, some morphological analyses indicate that it shows similarities with non-percomorph groups.^[8][10]

Phylogeny

External relationships

The two cladograms below are based on Betancur-R et al., 2017.^[5] Percomorphs are a clade of teleost fishes. The first cladogram shows the interrelationships of percomorphs with other living groups of teleosts.

Internal relationships

The following cladogram shows the evolutionary relationships of the various groups of extant percomorph fishes: