Tetragonopterinae Gill, 1858

Melo, Bruno F, Ota, Rafaela P, Benine, Ricardo C, Carvalho, Fernando R, Lima, Flavio C T, Mattox, George M T, Souza, Camila S, Faria, Tiago C, Reia, Lais, Roxo, Fabio F, Valdez-Moreno, Martha, Near, Thomas J & Oliveira, Claudio, 2024, Phylogenomics of Characidae, a hyper-diverse Neotropical freshwater fish lineage, with a phylogenetic classification including four families (Teleostei: Characiformes), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (Zool. J. Linn. Soc.) 202 (1), pp. 1-37 : 15-16

Tetragonopterinae Gill, 1858

Type genus: Tetragonopterus Cuvier, 1816 .

Included genus: Tetragonopterus .

Definition: The least inclusive crown clade that contains Tetragonopterus argenteus Cuvier, 1816 and Tetragonopterus georgiae (Géry, 1965) . This is a minimum-crown-clade definition. See Figure 4 for a reference phylogeny of Tetragonopterinae .

Etymology: From the ancient Greek τετΡᾰ- (tˈɛtɹə) meaning four, γωνία (ɡˈo͡ʊniə) meaning angle, and πτεΡὀν (tˈɛɹɑːn) meaning fin or wing.

Remarks: The initial description of Tetragonopterinae dates to the 19th century and traditionally included many species of Characidae (Gill 1858, Géry 1977). The composition changed with the publication of the Checklist of the Freshwater Fishes of South and Central America ( Reis et al. 2003), where Tetragonopterinae was limited to the genus Tetragonopterus (Reis 2003) . The molecular studies in the early 21st century have resulted in recognized species’ diversity in Tetragonopterus increasing from two to 13 species (Melo et al. 2011, Silva et al. 2013, 2016, Urbanski et al. 2018). The monophyly of Tetragonopterus is supported in molecular phylogenies and morphological studies (Melo et al. 2016, 2022, Mirande 2019), and relaxed clock analyses indicate the lineage diversified in the Miocene (Melo et al. 2016). The relationships among species of Tetragonopterus in the UCE phylogeny differ from those inferred from Sanger-sequenced datasets ( Fig. 4), specifically the resolution of T. argenteus as the sister-species of a clade containing T. araguaiensis Silva et al., 2013 and T. ommatus Silva et al., 2016 ( Fig. 4). Tetragonopterinae and Exodontinae exhibit a similar biogeographic pattern with many species distributed on the Brazilian Shield; T. argenteus is the only species distributed in the La Plata basin ( Fig. 4).