page_title: Bowfin
section_title: Evolution and phylogeny
hierarchical_section_title: Bowfin / Evolution and phylogeny
caption_attribution_description: English: Three Divisions of Neopterygii comprising Lepisosteiformes, Amiiformes, and Teleostei.
context_page_description: Bowfin are bony fish related to gars in the infraclass Holostei. Common names include mudfish, mud pike, dogfish, griddle, grinnel, swamp trout, and choupique. They are regarded as taxonomic relicts, being the sole surviving species of the order Amiiformes, which dates from the Jurassic to the Eocene, persisting to the present. Although bowfin are highly evolved, they are often referred to as "primitive fish" because they have retained some morphological characteristics of their early ancestors.
  Bowfin are demersal freshwater piscivores native to North America, and commonly found throughout much of the eastern United States, and in southern Ontario and Quebec. Fossil deposits indicate Amiiformes were once widespread in both freshwater and marine environments with a range that spanned across North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa. Now their range is limited to much of the eastern United States and adjacent southern Canada, including the drainage basins of the Mississippi River, Great Lakes and various rivers exiting in the Eastern Seaboard or Gulf of Mexico.
context_section_description: Competing hypotheses and debates continue over the evolution of Amia and relatives, including their relationship among basal extant teleosts, and organization of clades. Bowfin are the last remaining member of Halecomorphi, a group that includes many extinct species in several families. Halecomorphs were generally accepted as the sister group to Teleostei but not without question. While a halecostome pattern of neopterygian clades was produced in morphology-based analyses of extant actinopterygians, a different result was produced with fossil taxa which showed a monophyletic Holostei. Monophyletic Holostei were also recovered by at least two nuclear gene analyses, in an independent study of fossil and extant fish, and in an analysis of ultraconserved genomic elements.
  The extant ray-finned fish of the subclass Actinopterygii include 42 orders, 431 families and over 23,000 species. They are currently classified into two infraclasses, Chondrostei (holosteans) and Neopterygii (teleost fishes). Sturgeons, paddlefish, bichirs and reed fish compose the thirty-eight species of chondrosteans, and are considered relict species. Included in the over 23,000 species of neopterygians are eight relict species comprising gars and the bowfin.
caption: Three divisions of Neopterygii comprising Lepisosteiformes, Amiiformes, and Teleostei
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