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Sander (formerly known as Stizostedion) is a genus of predatory ray-finned fish in the family Percidae, which also includes the , Gymnocephalus, and Etheostomatinae. They are also known as "pike-perch" because of their resemblance to fish in the unrelated Esocidae (pike) family. They are the only genus in the Monotypy tribe Luciopercini, which is one of two tribes in the subfamily Luciopercinae.
The earliest known fossils of this genus are partial jaw and vertebrae elements from the middle Miocene (Barstovian)-aged Wood Mountain Formation of Saskatchewan, Canada.
This is not universally accepted, though, and the asprete ( Romanichthys valsanicola) has been more recently placed within the genus Zingel. (2025). 9789401772273, Springer, Dordrecht. ISBN 9789401772273
Two are within the genus, a Eurasian one and a North American one, which separated from a common ancestor around 20.8 million years ago (Mya) in the Miocene, when the North Atlantic Land Bridge connecting Europe to eastern North America subsided. The Eurasian clade then speciated from 13.8 Mya, while the two North American species speciated around 5.4 Mya.
The relatively old divergences given for North American and Eurasian Sander are supported by the discovery of a fossil Sander from the middle Miocene (16.3 to 13.6 mya)-aged Wood Mountain Formation of Canada. Prior to this discovery, it was suggested that Sander may have potentially been a much more recent immigrant to North America, potentially as young as the Pliocene or even Pleistocene. In Eurasia, fossils of the extant S. lucioperca and the extinct S. svetovidovi are known from the Late Miocene and early Pliocene of Ukraine. These fossils also suggest a coexistence between Sander and their close relative, the now-extinct Leobergia. It has been theorized that Sander was more tolerant than Leobergia to the global cooling that occurred during the Pliocene, leading to the extinction of the latter.
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