The wreckfish are a small group of

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 ...

in the

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 ...

''Polyprion'', belonging to the

monotypic 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 "unisp ...

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

Polyprionidae in the

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Acropomatiformes. They are deep-water marine fish and can be found on the ocean bottom, where they inhabit caves and shipwrecks (thus their common name). Their scientific name is from

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 ...

''poly'' meaning "many" and ''prion'' meaning "saw", a reference to their prominent spiny fins. Atlantic wreckfish ('' Polyprion americanus'') are a long-lived commercial species in the Mediterranean, the south-eastern Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean.

Taxonomy

There are two species: * '' Polyprion americanus'' (

Bloch Bloch is a surname of German origin. Notable people with this surname include: A *Adele Bloch-Bauer (1881–1925), Austrian entrepreneur *Albert Bloch (1882–1961), American painter *Alexandre Bloch (1857–1919), French painter *Alfred Bloch ( ...

& Schneider, 1801) (Atlantic wreckfish) * '' Polyprion oxygeneios'' (Schneider & Forster, 1801) (Hāpuku) The genera '' Lateolabrax'' and '' Stereolepis'' have previously been classified in Polyprionidae, but they are currently placed in their own monogeneric families Lateolabracidae and Stereolepididae.

References

{{Acropomatiformes-stub