Anguilloidei (Suborder)

Overview

The Anguilloidei are a sub-order of the order Anguilliformes (the eels) that contains 6 families:

Anguillidae (freshwater eels)
Chlopsidae (false morays)
Heterenchelyidae
Moringuidae (worm eels)
Muraenidae (moray eels)
Myrocongridae

Froese, Rainer, and Daniel Pauly, eds. (2006). "Anguilliformes" in FishBase. January 2006 version.

Taxonomy

The Suborder Anguilloidei is a member of the Order Anguilliformes. Here is the complete "parentage" of Anguilloidei:

Domain: Eukaryota Whittaker & Margulis,1978 - eukaryotes
- Kingdom: Animalia C. Linnaeus, 1758 - animals
  - Subkingdom: Bilateria (Hatschek, 1888) Cavalier-Smith, 1983 - bilaterians
    - Branch: Deuterostomia Grobben, 1908 - Deuterostomes
      - Infrakingdom: Chordonia (Haeckel, 1874) Cavalier-Smith, 1998
        Phylum: Chordata Bateson, 1885 - Chordates
        Subphylum: Vertebrata Cuvier, 1812 - Vertebrates
        Infraphylum: Gnathostomata auct. - Jawed Vertebrates
        Superclass: Osteichthyes Huxley, 1880 - Bony Fishes
        Class: Osteichthyes Huxley, 1880 - Bony Fishes
        Subclass: Actinopterygii - Ray-Finned Fishes
        Infraclass: Actinopteri
        Cohort: Elopomorpha Greenwood et al., 1966
        Order: Anguilliformes - Eels
        Suborder: Anguilloidei

The Suborder Anguilloidei is further organized into finer groupings including:

Family (8): Anguillidae · Anguilloididae · Heterenchelyidae · Milananguillidae · Moringuidae · Paranguillidae · Patavichthyidae · Proteomyridae

Families

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Anguillidae

Anguillidae is a family of fishes that contains the freshwater eels. There are 19 species and 6 subspecies in this family, all in genus Anguilla. They are catadromous, meaning they spend their lives in freshwater rivers, lakes, or estuaries and return to the ocean to spawn. The young eel larvae, called leptocephali, live only in the ocean and consume small particles called marine snow. They grow larger in size, and in their next growth stage they are called glass eels. At this stage they enter estuaries and when they become pigmented they are known as elvers. Elvers travel upstream in freshwater rivers where they grow to adulthood. Some details of eel reproduction are as yet unknown, and the discovery of the spawning area of the American and European eels in the Sargasso Sea is one of the more famous anecdotes in the history of Ichthyology (see Eel life history). The spawning areas of some other anguillid eels, such as the Japanese eel, and the giant mottled eel were also discovered recently in the western North Pacific Ocean. [more]

Anguilloididae

[more]

Heterenchelyidae

The Heterenchelyidae or Mud eels are a small family of eels native to the Atlantic, Mediterranean, and eastern Pacific. [more]

Milananguillidae

[more]

Moringuidae

The Moringuidae is a small family of eels. They are commonly known as spaghetti eels or worm eels, although the latter name is also shared with other families of eel. [more]

More info about the Family Proteomyridae may be found here.

Sources