Fishes of the World 5th Ed

Over one-half—32,000 species and counting—of the world’s living vertebrates—more than 60,000 species—are fishes. They arose and began to radiate more than 500 million years ago and both now and in the past exhibit incomparable diversity in their morphology, in the habitats they occupy, in their physiology, and in their behavior. This diversity is, in part, what makes understanding their evolutionary history and establishing a classification so challenging and yet fascinating. From hagfishes and lampreys to sharks, lungfishes and flatfishes, fishes include a vast array of amazing adaptations to almost all aquatic environments on earth.