Acestrorhynchus, Eigenmann & Kennedy

Genus Acestrorhynchus View in CoL

The subfamily Acestrorhynchinae was originally proposed to include Acestrorhynchus and Oligosarcus by Menezes (1969). Géry (1977) classified these two genera plus Bramocharax in the tribe Acestrorhynchini , as part of the subfamily Characinae . That author even stated that the Acestrorhynchini was “one of the best-known characid groups” ( Géry, 1977: 323). This hypothesis of a close relationship was challenged by Menezes & Géry (1983) and refuted by Buckup (1998). The latter author found that Oligosarcus and Acestrorhynchus are only distantly related. In his phylogeny Oligosarcus is deeply nested in the Characidae , while Acestrorhynchus was not included in the Characidae , but rather in its own family, the Acestrorhynchidae . The Acestrorhynchidae was also considered as valid by Lucena & Menezes (1998) and Menezes (2003), among others. The monophyly of Acestrorhynchus was tested by Toledo-Piza (2007), who obtained a sister-group relationship between this genus and the Cynodontidae as previously proposed by Lucena & Menezes (1998). This clade containing Acestrorhynchus and Rhaphiodon is nested in a group composed of the Agoniatinae and Salmininae , which is the sister group of the Bryconinae . All of these were traditionally included in the Characidae . Consequently, both the Acestrorhynchinae and Cynodontinae are herein proposed to be subfamilies of the Characidae .