The Grammicolepididae are a small family of deep-sea

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 ...

es in the order

Zeiformes The Zeiformes are a small order of exclusively marine ray-finned fishes most notable for the dories, a group of common food fish. The order consists of about 33 species in six extant families, mostly deep-sea types. The boarfishes ( Caproidae) ...

. They are called tinselfishes due to their silvery color. They are found near the bottom on the continental slope in the tropical and temperate regions of the Atlantic, Indian and western-central Pacific Oceans. They are of no commercial interest but are sometimes caught in trawls.

Genera and species

The family consists of three species in as many genera in two subfamilies: Subfamily Grammicolepidinae
*'' Grammicolepis'' ** ''Macrurocyttus acanthopodus'' Fowler, 1934 *'' Xenolepidichthys'' ** ''Xenolepidichthys dalgleishi'' Gilchrist 1922 Subfamily Macrurocyttinae
*'' Macrurocyttus'' ** ''Macrurocyttus acanthopodus'' Fowler, 1934

Phylogeny

Molecular data not including ''Macrurocyttus'' suggest that Grammicolepididae is a

monophyletic In biological cladistics for the classification of organisms, monophyly is the condition of a taxonomic grouping being a clade – that is, a grouping of organisms which meets these criteria: # the grouping contains its own most recent co ...

group, but without robust identification of its sister group. Morphological data including ''Macrurocyttus'' suggest that the family is

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage that includes organisms with mixed evolutionary origin but does not include their most recent common ancestor. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as Homoplasy, homoplasies ...

, with ''Macrurocyttus'' representing a clade distant from ''Grammicolepis''+''Xenolepidichthys''.

Description

The largest species, the thorny tinselfish, ''Grammicolepis brachiusculus'', grows up to long. ''Grammicolepis'' and ''Xenolepidichthys'' are silvery fishers with deep and compressed bodies. They have unique, vertically elongate scales. ''Macrurocyttus'' are dark brown to black, without scales, and smaller, to . They have extremely large eyes and one large serrated spine in the pelvic fins.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q134839 Taxa named by Felipe Poey