''Lethotremus'' is a

monospecific genus In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

of marine

ray-finned fish Actinopterygii (; ), members of which are known as ray-finned fish or actinopterygians, is a class of bony fish that comprise over 50% of living vertebrate species. They are so called because of their lightly built fins made of webbings of sk ...

belonging to the family

Cyclopteridae The Cyclopteridae are a family of marine fishes, commonly known as lumpsuckers or lumpfish, in the order Scorpaeniformes. They are found in the cold waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic, and North Pacific oceans. The greatest number of species ar ...

, the lumpfishes or lumpsuckers. This genus is found in the northern

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five Borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is ...

. Following a 2017 taxonomic review by Lee et al., the species ''Lethotremus awae'' was reclassified as a species of ''

Eumicrotremus ''Eumicrotremus'' is a genus of lumpfishes native to the northern oceans. The name for this genus comes from the Greek roots ''eu'' meaning "good", ''mikros'' meaning "small" or "little", and ''trema'' meaning "hole". Taxonomy ''Eumicrotremus'' ...

'', leaving the genus monotypic with ''Lethotremus muticus'' as its only species. Also known as the docked snailfish (a somewhat misleading name as this species is not one of the true snailfish in the family

Liparidae The snailfishes or sea snails (not to be confused with invertebrate sea snails), are a family of marine ray-finned fishes. These fishes make up the Liparidae, a family classified within the order Scorpaeniformes. Widely distributed from the ...

), is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

lumpfish The Cyclopteridae are a family of marine fishes, commonly known as lumpsuckers or lumpfish, in the order Scorpaeniformes. They are found in the cold waters of the Arctic, North Atlantic, and North Pacific oceans. The greatest number of species ar ...

native to the

Northeast Pacific The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each ...

. It is known from the

Bering Sea The Bering Sea ( , ; rus, Бе́рингово мо́ре, r=Béringovo móre, p=ˈbʲerʲɪnɡəvə ˈmorʲe) is a marginal sea of the Northern Pacific Ocean. It forms, along with the Bering Strait, the divide between the two largest landmasse ...

and the

Aleutian Islands The Aleutian Islands ( ; ; , "land of the Aleuts"; possibly from the Chukchi language, Chukchi ''aliat'', or "island")—also called the Aleut Islands, Aleutic Islands, or, before Alaska Purchase, 1867, the Catherine Archipelago—are a chain ...

, where its range extends to Unimak Pass, and it occurs at a depth range of . It is a

benthic The benthic zone is the ecological region at the lowest level of a body of water such as an ocean, lake, or stream, including the sediment surface and some sub-surface layers. The name comes from the Ancient Greek word (), meaning "the depths". ...

species that reaches in total length. It can be found on substrates of mud, rock, or gravel, and it is currently the only known species of ''Lethotremus'', following a reclassification of the second described species in the genus as ''

Eumicrotremus awae ''Eumicrotremus awae'' is a species of lumpfish endemic to the Pacific coast of Honshu , historically known as , is the largest of the four main islands of Japan. It lies between the Pacific Ocean (east) and the Sea of Japan (west). It is th ...

''.''

References

Cyclopteridae Fish described in 1896 Taxa named by Charles Henry Gilbert Monotypic fish genera {{Cottoidei-stub