family), followed by, in descending hierarchical order, the Auchenipteridae, 

 Doradidae, Mochokidae, and Ariidae. 



Both Ferraris and Curran focused on intergeneric relationships within the 

 Auchenipteridae (^sensu lato), but their conclusions differed considerably. Ferraris 

 (1988) examined a very broad suite of characters among nearly all of the genera of 

 auchenipterids and a number of outgroups, including ageneiosids and doradids. He 

 proposed the most drastic reinterpretation of preexisting classifications, by 

 reelevating one "auchenipterine" group to family status (the Centromochlidae), and 

 placing all of the ageneiosid taxa as a derived group within the Auchenipteridae. 

 Species within Ferraris' (1988) "Ageneiosus group" were thought to be more closely 

 related to some auchenipterid genera (the "Auchenipterus group"), than were 

 members of the latter related to other auchenipterid taxa. There was no indication 

 by Ferraris (1988) of how his cladograms were generated, or if a search was made 

 for shortest consensus trees, and in some instances it is not clear how certain 

 character states were loaded or how homoplasies were treated. Nevertheless, 

 Ferraris' (1988) study is the most comprehensive review to date of the comparative 

 morphology and relationships between the various genera traditionally included in 

 the Auchenipteridae and Ageneiosidae. - 



Curran (1989) retained the conventional three-family arrangement of the 

 neotropical doradoids, but he rejected the Ageneiosidae as the closest sister group 

 of the Auchenipteridae, on the basis of five putative synapomorphies that he felt 

 united the Doradidae and Auchenipteridae as sister families. Although Curran 

 analyzed his data set with a popular cladistic computer algorithm, his hypotheses of 

 certain character transformations were not entirely consistent with the opinions of 

 other authors, and one gets the impression that some characters were unduly 

 weighted. Curran (1989) examined very hmited ageneiosid material in his analysis, 





