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bony fish |
Also found in: Dictionary/thesaurus, Wikipedia, Hutchinson | 0.01 sec. |
bony fishAny member of the vertebrate class Osteichthyes, including the great majority of living fishes and all the world's sport and commercial fishes. Also called Pisces, the class excludes jawless fishes (hagfishes and lampreys) and cartilaginous fishes (sharks, skates, and rays). There are more than 20,000 species worldwide, all with a skeleton at least partly composed of true bone. Other features include, in most species, a swim bladder (an air-filled sac to give buoyancy), gill covers over the gill chamber, bony platelike scales, a skull with sutures, and external fertilization of eggs. Bony fishes occur in all freshwater and ocean environments. |
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Next, the book reviews the various organisms that live in the ocean or that rely on it for food, from bottom-dwelling bioluminescent plankton to the more familiar mollusks, bony fish, and marine mammals. The hyomandibula, which in bony fish helped move the operculum (the external gill flap) to aid in gill ventilation, was no longer necessary because the presence of lungs in early tetrapods allowed for independence from the gills. Sharks lack the inflatable swim bladder that allows bony fish to control buoyancy. |
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bony fish
