ABSTRACT
Oxudercine gobies, commonly known as mudskippers, are tropical and subtropical fishes naturally occurring in shallow sublittoral, littoral, and supralittoral zones of the Indo-Pacific and western Africa. The earliest oxudercine gobies were described by Carl Linnaeus: Gobius pectinirostris in 1758 and Gobius barbarus in 1766. Subsequent inclusion of oxudercine gobies in early published scientific literature also resulted from European voyages to tropical areas during which flora and fauna native to those locales were collected. A sister-group relationship between the oxudercines and amblyopines gobiids appears likely considering current literature based on morphological and molecular data. Oxudercine gobies are carnivorous, herbivorous, or omnivorous, whereas amblyopine gobies appear to be strictly carnivorous. The relationship between the Oxudercinae and Amblyopinae is not fully elucidated at this time and further study is warranted. The phylogeny presented in Murdy indicates that the more highly derived genera of Oxudercinae have increasingly developed adaptations to the terrestrial environment.
