The Ctenoluciidae (meaning "comb light family"), also known as pike-characins, are a small family of freshwater fishes from

Panama Panama, officially the Republic of Panama, is a country in Latin America at the southern end of Central America, bordering South America. It is bordered by Costa Rica to the west, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean Sea to the north, and ...

and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

. They have elongated,

pike Pike, Pikes or The Pike may refer to: Fish * Blue pike or blue walleye, an extinct color morph of the yellow walleye ''Sander vitreus'' * Ctenoluciidae, the "pike characins", some species of which are commonly known as pikes * ''Esox'', genus of ...

-like bodies, and several sharp and conical teeth. They are relatively large, up to in length, predatory fish. Some of these fish, such as ''

Ctenolucius hujeta ''Ctenolucius hujeta'', also known as silver gar, rocket gar, hujeta gar and freshwater barracuda, is a slender, medium-sized freshwater fish found in Venezuela and Colombia, where it is known as "''agujeta''"; Spanish for "shoelace". Large sp ...

'', enter the aquarium fish hobby, often being labeled a "freshwater

barracuda A barracuda is a large, predatory, ray-finned, saltwater fish of the genus ''Sphyraena'', the only genus in the family Sphyraenidae, which was named by Constantine Samuel Rafinesque in 1815. It is found in tropical and subtropical oceans worldw ...

" or "freshwater

needlefish Needlefish (family Belonidae) or long toms are piscivorous fishes primarily associated with very shallow marine habitats or the surface of the open sea. Some genera include species found in marine, brackish, and freshwater environments (e.g., ...

", descriptions of fish that are both unrelated to members of this family.

Genera

The two

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

in this group are: *''

Boulengerella ''Boulengerella'' is a genus of pike-characins from tropical South America, found in the Amazon Basin, Orinoco, and rivers of the Guiana Shield. ''Boulengerella'' was named after the Belgian ichthyologist George Albert Boulenger. The currentl ...

Eigenmann Eigenmann () is a surname. Notable persons with that surname include: * Andi Eigenmann (born 1990), Filipino actress * Carl H. Eigenmann (1863–1927), German–American ichthyologist, husband of Rosa Eigenmann * Eduardo de Mesa Eigenmann, birth n ...

, 1903 (five species) *''

Ctenolucius ''Ctenolucius'' is a genus of pike-characins found in southern Central America (Panama) and northwestern South America (Colombia and Venezuela). The currently described species in this genus are: * '' Ctenolucius beani'' ( Fowler, 1907) * '' Ct ...

Gill A gill () is a respiration organ, respiratory organ that many aquatic ecosystem, aquatic organisms use to extract dissolved oxygen from water and to excrete carbon dioxide. The gills of some species, such as hermit crabs, have adapted to allow r ...

, 1861 (two species)

References

* Nelson, Joseph S. (2006). ''

Fishes of the World ''Fishes of the World'' is a standard reference for the systematics of fishes. It was first written in 1976 by the American ichthyologist Joseph S. Nelson (1937–2011). Now in its fifth edition (2016), the work is a comprehensive overview of t ...

''. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Fish of Central America Fish of South America Taxa named by Leonard Peter Schultz Characiformes families {{Characiformes-stub