''Echeneis'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of fish in the family Echeneidae, the remoras. The genus is distributed in the

Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the Age of Discovery, it was known for se ...

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five 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 bounded by the cont ...

and

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or approximately 20% of the water area of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia (continent), ...

s. The generic name ''Echeneis'' comes from the

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

''echein'' meaning "to hold" and ''naus'' meaning "ship", a reference to the ability of these fish to attach themselves to the hulls of vessels and, in legend, to slow them down.

Species

The currently recognized species in this genus are: * '' Echeneis naucrates''

Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

, 1758 – live sharksucker * '' Echeneis neucratoides'' Zuiew, 1789 – whitefin sharksucker

Fossil species

* †'' Echeneis urupensis'' Daniltshenko, 1958 (

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

of Russia)P. G. Daniltshenko. 1960
Bony fishes of the Maikop deposits of the Caucasus
Trudy Paleontologicheskogo Instituta 78: pp. 171-172.

References

External links

*
''Echeneis''
at Zipcodezoo.com Marine fish genera Taxa named by Carl Linnaeus {{Carangiformes-stub