Euryhaline and thus capable of withstanding significant fluctuations in salinity and other water conditions. It’s been recorded in full marine conditions as well as pure freshwater environments, and commonly inhabits coastal mangrove creeks and swamps.

Such changes may occur on a daily or seasonal basis depending on locality, with some habitats influenced by daily tides whereas others become hypersal…

There also exists a sister-group relationship between the Melanotaeniidae and Malagasy family Bedotiidae, which may seem surprising given their respective modern-day distributional patterns. The precise origin and subsequent dispersal of the two families has been the subject of debate, with some palentologists suggesting that Madagascar’s freshwater fishes derived froma trans-oceanic dispersal during the Cenozoic Era, but the most compelling arguments currently indicate a freshwater radiation which occurred during the Mezozoic break-up of Gondwana.