Family Ephippidae Bleeker 1859 (Fig. 5D). Spadefishes; Curacas, Catecismos, Pagualas, Polleras, Jambos Description: Body deep, ovate and compressed; usually up to 70 cm in length; head short; mouth small, opens at front; jaws withbands of brush-like teeth; no teeth on roof of mouth; preopercle finely serrated; dorsal fin continuous, with 5 or 9 spines and 18–40 soft rays; anal fin with 3 spines and 15–28 soft rays (Robertson & Allen 2015, Nelson et al. 2016). Distribution: Marine (rarely in brackish water, very rare in freshwater); Atlantic, Indian and Pacific oceans (Nelson et al. 2016). One genus and one 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 76, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.5376.1.1, http://zenodo.org/record/10208788