Proceedings of 

 the United States 

 National Museum X^^^ 



SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION . WASHINGTON, B.C. 



Volume 117 1965 Number 3518 



SYSTEMATIC SIGNIFICANCE 



OF BREEDING TUBERCLES IN FISHES 



OF THE FAMILY PERCIDAE 



By Bruce B. Collette ^ 



Introduction 



Breeding tubercles are epidermal structures that function primarily 

 in facilitating contact between individuals during spawning. Tuber- 

 cles are used by some fishes to defend their nests and territories or 

 to protect their body and fin surfaces in nest building. Breeding 

 tubercles are present on species of at least 13 different families of fishes 

 in three orders. Except in the Cyprinidae and Catostomidae, their 

 presence either has been ignored or has been mentioned briefly, with 

 little comment on their biological or systematic importance. The 

 purpose of this study is to survey the Percidae for the presence of 

 breeding tubercles and to compare the different tubercle patterns 

 with the present classification of the family. This paper is the fourth 

 in a series on the systematics of the Percidae (see Collette, 1962, 

 1963; Collette and Yerger, 1962). A review of the occurrence and 

 significance of breeding tubercles in fishes is currently in preparation. 



In view of the large number of reports of breeding tubercles in the 

 Cyprinidae and the Catostomidae, it is somewhat surprising that they 



> Ichthyological Laboratory, Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, U.S. National 

 Museum, Washington, D.C. 



667 



