Mormyridae Bonaparte, 1831

See "Descriptions" tab above for a key to mormyrid genera.

Introduction to the Mormyridae

With more than 200 species in 21 genera, the Family Mormyridae is a modern radiation within the Osteoglossomorpha, an ancient lineage of teleost fishes in which most other living groups are species-poor. Mormyrids are found only in Africa, in freshwater habitats over most of the continent with the exception of the Sahara, northernmost Mahgreb and southernmost Cape provinces. Mormyrids reach their highest diversity in the river systems of Central and West Africa and are often the most abundant kind of fish in riverine habitats.

Mormyrid fishes have long served humans as an important food source along Africa's inland waterways. Ancient Egyptians accurately depicted mormyrids on the walls of their tombs and even worshipped Mormyrus in the temple of Oxyrhynchus. However, scientists only discovered mormyrids' most unusual characteristic in the latter half of the 20th Century: an active electric sense by means of which individuals orient to their environment and communicate (see "Electric Organ Discharge" below). Mormyrid fishes have since become a model system for research into vertebrate sensory biology, behavior, and communication. They are also popular in the tropical fish hobby where they are known as "elephant-nose fish" and "baby whales."

Adult mormyrids range from about 4 centimeters to 1.5 meters in length and vary considerably in morphology. Most species of genera Petrocephalus, Pollimyrus and Stomatorhinus are short, laterally compressed, deep-bodied fishes with blunt, rounded snouts and small, often inferior to subinferior mouths. Others, such as species of Mormyrops and Isichthys, are elongate with more cylindrical bodies, with terminal mouths. Species of Campylomormyrus and some Mormyrops and Mormyrus have long tubular snouts used for extracting invertebrates from sediment and root masses (Marrero & Winemiller, 1993). Others in genera Marcusenius, Gnathonemus, and Genyomyrus possess a variously developed fleshy protuberance on the chin that functions in electrolocation of prey organisms. In all mormyrids, the mouths are non-protrusible and small cycloid scales cover all but the head. The head (including the eyes), dorsum and belly are covered by a thin layer of skin beneath which lie electroreceptors of different varieties (see below). All mormyrids retain a full complement of paired and unpaired fins. The dorsal and anal fins lack spiny rays and are variable in length among the different genera. In many genera these fins are positioned far back on the body and are more or less symmetrically opposed about the midline. The caudal fin in mormyrids is deeply forked and has a distinctive rounded V-shape with symmetrical, scaled and fleshy dorsal and ventral lobes; it emerges from a narrow, cylindrical peduncle within which lies the electric organ.

In addition to specializations for electroreception which include an enlarged cerebellum, electroreceptors on the body surface, an electric organ in the caudal peduncle and an ortholog of the potassium channel gene expressed only in electric organ tissue, mormyrids have other specializations for acute audition: a gas-filled tympanic bladder coupled to the sacculus in each ear (Fletcher & Crawford, 2001). Males of the genus Pollimyrus communicate not only electrically, but also acoustically, with elaborate courtship songs generated by muscles that vibrate the swim bladder (Crawford, 1997). Little is known about the role of acoustic communication in other genera.

Most mormyrids are nocturnal invertebrate-feeders. However, some species of the genus Mormyrops are piscivores. At night, Mormyrops anguilloides from Lake Malawi engage in a form of semi-cooperative "pack hunting" of sleeping cichlids (Arnegard & Carlson, 2005).

The sister-group to the Mormyridae is the monotypic family Gymnarchidae. Gymnarchus niloticus has a nilo-sudanic distribution and is also electrogenic, but its EOD resembles a continuous wave unlike like the pulsatile EODs produced by mormyrids. Together, the Mormyridae and the Gymnarchidae make up the Superfamily Mormyroidea. Gymnarchus and mormyrids share numerous anatomical characteristics—both related and unrelated to active electrolocation—and they are also the only vertebrates known to posses aflagellate sperm (Morrow, 2004)..

Based on osteological characters, Taverne (1972) divided the Mormyridae into two subfamilies, the Petrocephalinae, containing only the genus Petrocephalus, and the Mormyrinae, containing the remaining genera. Molecular phylogenetic studies (Lavoué, 1999; Sullivan, 2000; Lavoué et al., 2003) have supported this division.