''Belone'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of needlefish common in

brackish Brackish water, sometimes termed brack water, is water occurring in a natural environment that has more salinity than freshwater, but not as much as seawater. It may result from mixing seawater (salt water) and fresh water together, as in estu ...

and marine waters. It is one of ten genera in the family Belonidae.

Species

Three recognised

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

are in this genus: * ''

Belone belone The garfish (''Belone belone''), also known as the garpike or sea needle, is a pelagic, oceanodromous needlefish found in brackish and marine waters of the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean, Caribbean, Black, and Baltic Seas. Description The ...

'' (

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the ...

, 1761) (garfish) * '' Belone euxini'' Günther, 1866 * ''

Belone svetovidovi The short-beaked garfish (''Belone svetovidovi'') is an uncommon species of needlefish in marine waters of the eastern Atlantic Ocean. This pelagic needlefish is present off the coasts of Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom, and po ...

'' Collette & Parin, 1970 (short-beaked garfish)

Etymology

Georges Cuvier erected the genus by using the specific name of Linnaeus's ''Esox belone'' in

tautonymy A tautonym is a scientific name of a species in which both parts of the name have the same spelling, such as ''Rattus rattus''. The first part of the name is the name of the genus and the second part is referred to as the ''specific epithet'' in ...

, the word ''belone'' is

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

for a needlefish and is thought to have originally referred to the greater pipefish.

References

External links

* * Belonidae Ray-finned fish genera Taxa named by Georges Cuvier {{Beloniformes-stub