Biodiversity of fishes in Mexico

Mexico is recognized as a mega diverse country, where the fishes are the group of vertebrates with the highest species richness; this group includes 2 763 known species and represents 9.8% of the total number of known species in the world. Each group of fish has a unique evolutionary history, therefore an ample variety of forms exists that occupy a wide part of the aquatic habitats of Mexico. This paper presents a current review of the Mexican fish fauna, which includes 505 freshwater, 2 224 marine and 563 estuarine and vicarian species, characterized as having neartical, neotropical or transitional distributions on continental waters and from 7 marine provinces. The diversity of shapes, reproduction and behavior of some species are also shown, enhanced with tables about the taxonomic and ecological classification of the fish fauna, as well as a graph that shows the increasing knowledge of the fishes in the country since the 18th century.