Ichthyology





Ichthyology is the branch of zoology devoted to the study of fishes. This
includes the bony fishes (Osteichthyes), the cartilaginous fishes
(Chondrichthyes) such as sharks and rays, and the jawless fishes (Agnatha).
Since there are as many species of fish as all other vertebrates put
together, and they have been evolving for a very long time, there is a
bewildering variety; while most species have probably been found and
described, there is much that is still not known about biology and behavior.

The practice of ichthyology is closely connected with marine biology,
limnology, and oceanography.

History

The first scientific description of fishes occurs in Aristotle, who mentions
various facts about 118 species. Little additional work is known until the
1500s, when Guillaume Rondelet published his De Piscibus Marinum describing
244 species. During the 1600s, explorers found new types of fish; George
Markgraf's Naturalis Brasilae added another 100 species, and in 1686 the
Historia Piscium of John Ray and Francis Willughby described over 400 species.

The title "father of ichthyology" belongs to Peter Artedi, a student of
Linnaeus who identified five orders of "fishes" (including cetaceans) and
divided those into genera. Artedi drowned by accident in an Amsterdam canal
in 1735, and Linnaeus published his manuscripts posthumously.

During the 18th and 19th century, a steady stream of specimens from all
parts of the world deluged museums.

In the 1780s M. E. Bloch published Ichthyologia as a series of volumes of
plates, and after he died, his associate Johann Schneider published the M.
E. Blochii Systemae Ichthyologiae describing 1,519 species.

Georges Cuvier's Regne animal distribu� d�apr�s son organisation of
1817-1830 was a key step forward for fish classification, and Cuvier worked
with his student Achille Valenciennes to produce the 22-volume Histoire
Naturelle des Poissons in the 1830s - though never completed, the work
described 4,514 species.

Albert G�nther published his Catalogue of the Fishes of the British Museum
between 1859 and 1870, describing over 6,800 species and mentioning another
1,700.

The greatest ichthyologist around the beginning of the 20th century is
generally considered to be David Starr Jordan, who wrote 650 articles and
books on the subject, in addition to serving as president of Indiana
University and Stanford University.