Mr Ng Heok Hee is a graduate of NUS, where he previously spent 7 years working on the taxonomy of Southeast Asian catfishes. He is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Michigan, where he works on the phylogeny of African and Asian catfishes. See his webpage for details.

The Anchariidae is a group of catfishes endemic to the island of Madagascar, off the southeast coast of Africa. This group consists of a single genus, Ancharius (Steindachner;1880), whose diversity has been poorly studied due to their rarity in museum collections. The phylogenetic relationships of this particular group to that of other catfishes is also unclear. They have previously been considered as a sister group for both of the marine catfishes, Ariidae and the African catfish group Mochokidae by various taxonomists.

Based on materials from recent collections, this talk will discuss the diversity of Ancharius, as well as test current hypotheses of phylogenetic relationships of the Anchariidae to other catfishes using both morphological and molecular data. The implications for the historical biogeography of the group from the results of the phylogenetic analysis will also be discussed.