Family Engraulidae Gill 1861 (Fig. 2J). Anchovies; Anchoas, Anchovetas, Boquerones, Plásticas Description: Body elongate, herring-like, slightly compressed; up to 35 cm in length; snout blunt, prominent, upper jaw projecting beyond the tip of the lower jaw in most species; rear of the mouth extending well behind the eye; lower jaw suspended below the head; jaw teeth usually absent, small or minute; pelvic fins inserted well behind the pectoral fins and before the dorsal-fin base; abdominal scutes absent; body often translucent and with a silver stripe down the side in some (Robertson & Allen 2015, Nelson et al. 2016). Distribution: Marine, occasionally freshwater; Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans (Nelson et al. 2016). Three genera and thirteen species in Nicaraguan freshwaters.

Published as part of Angulo, Arturo, Betts, Joel T., González-Alemán, Néstor J., Castañeda, Edgar, Berghe, Eric Van Den, Elías, Diego J., Mcmahan, Caleb D. & Matamoros, Wilfredo A., 2023, Continental fishes of Nicaragua: diversity, distribution and conservation status; with an annotated and illustrated checklist of species and an identification guide to families, pp. 1-89 in Zootaxa 5376 (1) on page 16, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5376.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/10208788