Taxonomy and phylogeny of fishes from brazilian small streams

Abstract

The fish fauna occurring in Brazilian small streams comprises 36 families of teleost freshwater fishes. The systematics and phylogenetic knowledge about this fauna greatly expanded during the last two decades, but is still very heterogeneous. For some taxonomic groups there are taxonomic identification keys and well-documented phylogenetic hypotheses, while other groups are mostly comprised by poorly known species. The increase in the knowledge of Neotropical fish diversity was associated with the significant growth of hypotheses about their evolution and contributed to the understanding of the phylogenetic history of fish comunities and their structure in small streams.